SEMPER PARATUS

This Generation

2010-08-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

On the Answering Muslims blog the question of the meaning of "this generation" as used in the Olivet Discourse as found in the synoptic Gospels came up (see the comment section - here). Some argued that it could mean "this race" or something other than "this generation". Many Christians believe it is necessary to make this move in order to prove that Jesus (or the disciples) did not make a false prediction that He would come in the first century. Ironically, it is just because people have argued that Jesus did not return in judgment in the first century that has led unbelievers who take the phrase "this generation" according to its clear meaning to argue that Jesus and the early Christians were wrong in their expectations. But taking the phrase as it is uniformly translated does not at all create a problem, at least not if one interprets the rest of the passage(s) that bear on the subject according to the way such language is used throughout the Bible, particularly in apocalyptic sections. In other words, the phrase should be translated "this generation", and these things did come to pass exactly as Jesus, interpreted against the backdrop of the Old Testament prophets, predicted that they would.

The following are my reasons for thinking the phrase is properly translated as "this generation". Perhaps in future posts I will go through the entire discourse in Matthew, beginning back in chapter 23, and show how all of these things comport with what happened in the first century. Suffice it to say here, beginning back in Matthew 23 Jesus is clearly indicting His first century hearers, particularly the Jewish leadership, for rejecting Him, and telling them the wrath of God would fall on them. As Jesus exits the Temple area with His disciples, they point out the beauty of the Temple, apparently because He has just said it will be desolated, which provokes Christ to respond that the Temple would be destroyed. At this the disciples ask Jesus when these things will be, and Jesus proceeds to tell them what to look for. He speaks of many things that will happen before the end, including earthquakes, wars, famines, the coming of false Christ's, the abomination of desolation being set up in the temple, Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, etc. After they see all of this happen, they are to flee from Jerusalem, for her destruction is near. Immediately after all of the above happens, the very heavens would be shaken, the sign of the Son of man would appear in the sky, and faithless Jerusalem would be no more. He concludes this part of the discourse by saying, "All these things shall come upon this generation". [This of course is a paraphrase and a rough synopsis.]

When one interprets these things in light of their Biblical context, and when one compares this to what happened in the first century, as we have recorded for us in detail by Josephus, who was an eyewitness, there is every reason to believe that they happened just like Jesus predicted.

There were wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, and false Messiah's during that time period. (Many of these things are listed several times over in the book of Acts.)

Jerusalem was surrounded by the armies of imperial Rome. The armies briefly withdrew only to return a short time later, and during the interim while the Jews were rejoicing thinking their disaster had been averted, the Jewish Christians left the city according to Christ's command.

The Son of Man did coming riding the clouds in judgment, and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed just like He predicted. In fact, they were destroyed within a generation - AD. 70.

There is, therefore, no problem on this view with taking the phrase "this generation" literally.

None of this impinges on the truth of the return of Christ at the end of history to resurrect the dead, judge the world, and create a New Heavens and a New Earth. There are several other passages that speak of these events in contexts that are not qualified by time texts or other temporal indicators.

With that said, here are my reasons for taking "generation" and "this generation" to be the correct translation of the words, as did many of the early Christians (Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Theophlacyt, et. al.) and many other able men closer to our own times (John Gill, J. B. Lightfoot, Albert Barnes, John Wesley, C. H. Spurgeon, John A. Broadus, F. F. Bruce, and D.A. Carson, just to list a few).

1. All standard English translations render the Greek word genea in the Olivet Discourse as “generation”, not race (KJV, NKJV, NAS, ESV, etc.). Many other translations are even more explicit.

2. Greek lexicons and reference works on Greek grammar give “generation” as the primary meaning of the word (Thayer, BAGD, et. al). Even those who say the word could sometimes mean “race”, and many do not, list it as a very remote meaning.

3. A number of lexicons even make reference to the relevant passages in the Olivet discourse when giving “generation” as the meaning of the word (e.g. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, rev. ed., 112; Arndt and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Vol. 1), as do other reference works.

4. No example can be brought forward from anywhere in the New Testament outside of the Olivet discourse – excepted here because that is the verse in question – where genea must be translated as “race”. Furthermore, “race” does not appear to even be a very likely reading of any verse outside of the Olivet discourse.

5. If the disciples wanted to say race, the best word for this, a word that was at their disposal since they use it elsewhere, would have been genos.

6. Every time the word genea is used in Matthew’s Gospel (and the other Synoptics) outside of the Olivet discourse it is not only translated as “generation”, but that is the only possible translation. Translating it as “race” in such places would not fit.

7. Most importantly, the full phrase, “this generation,” which is only used by Jesus in the New Testament, can never mean “that generation”, “this race”, or “that race”. The following is every time the phrase is used (outside of the times it occurs in the Olivet discourse as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels):

“To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." But wisdom is proved right by her actions. “ Matthew 11:16ff.

“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. “ Matthew 12:41-42

“The Pharisees came out and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven, to test Him. Sighing deeply in His spirit, He said, "Why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." Mark 8:12

“To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.' For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He has a demon!' "The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'” Luke 7:31

“As the crowds were increasing, He began to say, "This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up with the men of this generation at the judgment and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. Luke 11:29-32

“One of the lawyers said to Him in reply, "Teacher, when You say this, You insult us too." But He said, "Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers. "Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them. "So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers; because it was they who killed them, and you build their tombs. "For this reason also the wisdom of God said, 'I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.' "Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering." Luke 11:50-51

Note the following salient facts:

a. Often in these verses Jesus is directly addressing His contemporaries making it clear that what he is saying has particular reference to them.

b. To make the word mean race in many of these contexts is to put the Jews of all time under a perpetual curse. It was the generation then living that was guilty of rejecting Jesus and on whom the wrath of God would fall, not a future generation.

It is for such reasons that commentators almost never give an example where “generation” or “this generation” could be translated as “race” or “this race” and make it fit the context; they most often just assert that the word or phrase could mean the latter. On those rare occasions when they do try to give examples, I would maintain that they are not dealing squarely with the facts.

Interestingly enough, even the unprovable (and demonstrably false) assumption that the phrase means “that race” does not refute the view that the passage is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, for people who have thought this to be a possible translation have still recognized the incredible fit of everything in the passage – using the Bible of course to control how they interpret prophetic discourse, rather than ignoring Biblical idioms and imposing on the passage what such words “literally” mean to them – with what happened in the first century. For instance, the relatively well known commentator Adam Clarke, writing in 1810, believed that the phrase “this generation” could mean “this race”, though he gave no argument for this (which is but to be expected). But interestingly enough, Clarke interpreted the passage as a reference to Jerusalem’s destruction.

“This chapter contains a prediction of the utter destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, and the subversion of the whole political constitution of the Jews; and is one of the most valuable portions of the new covenant Scriptures, with respect to the evidence which it furnishes of the truth of Christianity. Everything which our Lord foretold should come on the temple, city, and people of the Jews, has been fulfilled in the most correct and astonishing manner….” Clarke’s Commentary, 3:225

To The Believers Is He Most Kind and Merciful

2010-07-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

The New articles are out at Answering Islam. I haven't read them all yet but as usual I am looking forward to it and would encourage others to look them over as well.

I contributed an article showing yet another way the Qur'an violates it's own criteria of "pure monotheism". Check it out here.

God is Love; Not so Allah

2010-05-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

Someone recently asked me a question via e-mail and I thought I would include it here along with my brief response (of course names and other sensitive material have been edited out):

Greetings my brother in Christ,

I am working on [something]. [It] consists of a handful of articles that I have written critiquing world religions. One of them of course being Islam. Mike Robinson told me a little bit about you so I would like your input on a question that I am asking a few apologists.

Men like Francis Schaeffer and John Frame as well as some historic greek philosophers, have made a similar argument that God cannot be personal or love if he is a unitarian type god etc. For these two things require multi-persons.

I am kinda surveying a couple of Christian apologist to see how they feel about this argument. At one time I believed that [the] majority of Christian apologist would agree to this statement, but after a few recent conversations I am not to sure how many Christians believe this argument. The response argument being that God can have self love for himself etc. What do you think?

Thanks,

Greetings _______,

For my part, a unitarian god looks like little more than an abstraction, so it is very difficult to conceive of such a being loving "himself" much less others. But if we grant the personality of such a god for the sake of argument, and therefore the possibility that he could "love" himself, then we must ask if loving oneself is really what we mean by love. Usually a person who is defined by self-love is not really thought of as loving in the true sense of the term. Certainly this is not the Biblical definition of love, where love is seen in giving itself away to others and for the sake of others. In fact the word used for love in 1 Corinthians 13 in the King James Bible communicates the point quite well: charity.

4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Would we consider a person charitable if he gives things to himself?

"That Ebenezer Scrooge, what a guy! he just took a million dollars out of his account and stored it in his personal vault at home. Have you ever seen anything so charitable as that in your life? Oh, if the world were only filled with more people who were so charitable as that."

I don't think so.

Likewise, to say that the monad of post-Christian apostate Judaism or the new-fangled "god" of Islam are love because the "god" of either loves himself is to use the word "love" in an equivocal sense, i.e. not in the sense we mean when we say that God is love and when we say that love requires a God who is multi-personal.

I hope that helps. If you have any follow up question, by all means feel free to write back.

Semper Paratus,

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Sam Shamoun has written an article related to the above that is well worth reading: The Triune God - The Greatest Conceivable Being that Exists.

Civilization and Self-Control

2010-04-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

By Bojidar Marniov

“I don’t want men looking at me lustfully when I work here.”

This is how a Muslim girl, cashier at Wal-Mart, replied to my wife’s question about the purpose of her head-covering, wrapped tightly around her head, covering everything except her face. My first reaction was, “Phew, how do you look ‘lustfully’ at a woman’s hair?” In a Christian society, the hair is the glory of a woman (1 Cor. 11:15). We don’t normally expect Western men to fantasize over a woman’s hair; and hair is a legitimate ornament for a woman, as far as the Bible is concerned. Deviations, of course, have existed in every culture, but are they so common in the Western societies as to warrant such strict dress-code? What made this Muslim girl have such strange views about modesty?

Her views are not informed by the norms of the Western society but by the tenets of her Muslim worldview. According to the teaching of the Muslim religious teachers, a woman is a sexual object from her hair to her feet, and every part of her body is an occasion for seduction. Westerners usually believe that the burqas and the yashmaks of the Muslim women have some religious significance – something like the head coverings Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 11. They don’t. The only significance of Muslim clothing for women is the avoidance of sexual seduction by the woman. Burqas are not a religious symbol; they are a protective barrier, protecting both men and women from the male sexual lust.

The Trinity in the Old Testament: A Brief Summary of the Evidence

2010-03-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

The latest articles on Answering Islam are all up now. I contributed the following article on the Trinity.

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In order to establish some kind of continuity between the message of the prophets and the doctrine of Tawheed, which Muslims allege is taught in the Qur’an, some Muslims argue that the Old Testament (not to mention the New) does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity. With an eye to this, the following aims to present a brief summary of the evidence that the prophets taught the Trinity....

To read the rest of this article, go here. After reading, come back and leave your comments/questions.

Missing Quotes

2010-03-28T21:35:00.001-07:00

Many years ago when I was in a position to avail myself of an excpetionally large theological library, one that well exceeded my own personal library of 4,000 plus books, I took a great many notes, some of which I failed to include all the information for. For example, I have a number of references written down on points of interest from the Babylonian Talmud, but I did not copy out the relevant quotes. I have seen portions of the Talmud online, but not the portions relevant to the references I have. Similarly, I also wrote out some quotes, but failed to copy down the references. To get to the point, I wonder if anyone out there who reads this blog has access to the Babylonian Talmud and could look up a couple of things for me. I have seen that the Babylonian Talmud is now available on CD-Rom and do plan to avail myself of it at my nearest convenience, but since I don't know when that will be anyone who has easy access to it now could be a blessing to me if they would look up the references I have. Please let me know. Thanks.

Some Miscellaneous Quotes on Islam From Various Christian Confessions of Faith

2010-03-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

"To pray for the propagation of the gospel and kingom of Christ to all nations; for the conversion of the Jews, the fulness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of our Lord; for the deliverance of the distressed churches abroad from the tyranny of the antichristian faction, and from the cruel oppressions and blasphemies of the Turk [i.e. Muslim];...(The Directory for the Publick Worship of God: Agreed Upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, With the Assistance of Commissioners from the Church of Scotland, As a Part of the Covenanted Uiformity in Religion Betwixt the Churches of Christ in the Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland)

"Our Churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any doubting; that is to say, there is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God: eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and power, who also are coeternal, the Father the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And the term "person" they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify, not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself.

They condemn all heresies which have sprung up against this article, as the Manichaeans, who assumed two principles, one Good and the other Evil- also the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans, and all such. They condemn also the Samosatenes, old and new, who, contending that there is but one Person, sophistically and impiously argue that the Word and the Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but that "Word" signifies a spoken word, and "Spirit" signifies motion created in things." (Augsburg Confession, Article I: Of God)

"HERESIES. Therefore we condemn the [unbelieving] Jews and Mohammedans, and all those who blaspheme that sacred and adorable Trinity. We also condemn all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate to another in the Trinity, and that their is something unequal in it, a greater or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aetius, Macedonius, Anthropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought." (The Second Helvetic Confession, Ch. III - OF God, His Unity and Trinity)

A Blunder in the Qur'an

2010-02-16T21:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the following is not really about a blunder in the Qur'an. It is about a blunder in my copy of Yusuf Ali's The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an: New Edition with Revised Translation, Commentary and Newly Compiled Comprehensive Index (amana publications).

I've read and referred to YA's translation (among others) a lot over the years, but I only recently noticed that my copy has a numbering error in Surah 6. After properly enumerating verses 1-120 it suddenly skips to 140. At first I thought a camel might have snuck in and ate some of the verses - either that or my dog did it, proving that she really will eat anything, however distatsteful it might be - but after picking up a copy of Muhammad Asad's translation which was close at hand, I discovered they were all there and were only wrongly numbered.

Yahya Snow Challenged to Debate the Trinity

2010-01-19T19:29:00.001-08:00

See the following blog posts on my debate challenge to Yahya Snow:

My Challenge

Yahya's Response

My Reply

Anyone interested in seeing this debate go forward, please contact Yahya Snow and encourage him to accept both the challenge and the debate topic.

The Prophet and the Prophets - Appendix I

2009-12-13T08:33:00.001-08:00

The following is an appendix to the below series of articles on Deuteronomy 18:

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part I
Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II
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Appendix I: The Prophet and the Prophets

In its grammatical-historical context, Deuteronomy 18 doesn’t directly predict the coming of one specific individual, at least not in the way that many people surmise.

Whereas Deuteronomy 18 speaks of a “prophet”, singular, the grammatical-contextual usage, in full harmony with the exigencies of Israel’s historical situation, indicates that the word is being used in a collective or distributive rather than in a simple sense, and therefore points not to just one person but to many prophets or an entire order of prophets. In other words, the prophecy/promise of Deuteronomy 18 is about the prophetic office, and is, at least initially, as will be shown, fulfilled in the case of Joshua, Moses’ immediate successor, as well as the long train of Hebrew prophets that God would raise up after him, from Samuel to John the Baptist.

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The rest of this article can be read here at Answering Islam. Comments on the article may be left in the comments section of this blog.

Help Get Sam Shamoun a Laptop

2009-12-04T20:34:00.000-08:00

Please help get Sam a laptop for Christmas. For more information on this, go here.

Silencing A Muslim Dawagandist

2009-10-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

Here is another reply that just went up at Answering Islam, this one in response to an attack against the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by Sami Zaatari.

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Anyone familiar with Zaatari's method of reasoning knows that his arguments against Christianity are often false just on their face (and for that reason have a face only someone like Zaatari could love), and thus any analysis expended on them is bound to be a case of overkill. What is generally true turns out to be no less the case when it comes to one of Zaatari’s latest reckless attacks on Christ and Christianity, which centers on Isaiah 53, a passage he believes refutes the Lord’s resurrection, a doctrine that is admittedly central and indispensable to the Christian faith. (Zaatari’s article can be found here.)

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After reading the rest of this article, which can be found here, please return and leave your comments.

A Lie Upon God

2009-10-18T14:24:00.001-07:00

I have a new article up at Answering Islam, which is a response to Ibn Anwar, a pronounced Muslim and anti-Trinitarian.

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In a recycled article that now appears on the Muslim Responses website, a Muslim dawagandist named Ibn Anwar attempted to refute the Trinity and prove Islam’s peculiar brand of monotheism from the Holy Scriptures, specifically from a passage found in Mark’s account of the Gospel. This article constitutes a rebuttal.

In the opening paragraph Mr. Anwar provides the following explanation of his thesis:

“There are quite a number of verses and passages throughout the New Testament that teach and propagate the absolute Oneness of God the Creator and Jesus' subservience to Him as a servant and worshipper. We will not be scrutinising [sic] all those verses here. What we will do is focus on just one passage which to my understanding as I will prove in due course succinctly refutes the Trinity and shows Jesus' admission to absolute numerical monotheism. Before we proceed it is noteworthy that Muslim apologists in general like to quote Mark 12:29 in particular whenever arguing for Jesus' monotheistic belief, but, they almost never discuss the immediate verses that follow that would indeed strengthen their case further as we shall see…”

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To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, you are invited to return here and leave your comments after reading the article.

The Plural of Majesty: Allah is Neither Plural Nor Majestic; or, How Modern Muslims Have One-Upped Muhammad

2009-08-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Silence and Propaganda Are the Best Policy

In a lengthy paper entitled Let Us Make Man: A Trinitarian Interpretation of Genesis 1:26 (and Related Passages), I argued, in a long train of others before and since, on prima facie, exegetical, systematic and historical grounds that the plural pronouns used by Yahweh, the one true God, in places like Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, are only properly understood in light of the rich Trinitarianism of Biblical revelation rather than in terms of any kind of impoverished or sterile unitarianism (not to mention polytheism). Space was also devoted in the paper to refuting some of the more popular alternative approaches, including the old canard that the phenomenon found in these passages are only instances of some kind of literary plural or figure of speech – such as the plural of majesty, the plural of respect, the plural of deliberation, and the editorial “we”.

To date, no Muslim has refuted the kind of positive evidence I (and others) have provided, apparently going with the motto that silence on this score is the best policy, and no Muslim has thought it meet to address the problems with the alternative views that I (and others) have enumerated, but for all that Muslim dawagandists have not stopped repeating the idea that a literary plural – specifically, the plural of majesty – is in view, a tactic that amounts to nothing more than propaganda.1 In light of this, it seems to me that it is high time to once again explain the problem this view has, and add to the list of problems certain considerations that show that this way of explaining the passages is illicit, given what Muslim sources themselves tell us, and incongruous, given the Islamic view of God.

To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, after finishing the article you may return here and leave your comments in the provided combox.

The True Shahada: Defended - Part III

2009-07-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

This is the third installment of my response to an anonymous Muslim’s critique of my article, the True Shahada. Picking up Anonymous’ critique where I left off in part two, the following will show that John 17:3 supports the undiminished deity of Christ contrary to Mr. Anonymous’ self-styled rebuttal and contrary to Islam’s Shahada. Thus it will be demonstrated once again that this passage is of no help to Muslims no matter how anxious they are to establish some kind of revelatory precedent for their religion, one that goes back beyond a mottled version of seventh century paganism, sectarian, apocryphal, and Gnostic “Christianities”, and post-messianic Talmudic Judaism, to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

To read the rest of this artice, please go here. As always, you may return to the comments section provided on this page and leave your remarks.

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II

2009-07-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, after retrieving an unfinished draft from my old broken laptop, I have finally finished the long promised article on Deuteronomy 18. Enjoy.

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Having shown in Part One that the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18 was not and could not have been speaking of Muhammad, it remains only to show who the ultimate fulfillment of the passage really is. Although the previous article was dispatched in short order, focused as it was on Muhammad, about whom the passage has nothing positive to say, the present paper will naturally be somewhat longer since the focus is now on “…the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:45)

The rest of this article can be read on Answering Islam at the following link: see Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II. As always, after reading the article you may return here and leave your comments and/or ask questions in the provided combox. May the Name of the Lord be praised.

Rashad Khalifa's Killer Finally Found

2009-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

The murderer of Rashad Khalifa has finally been found and apprehended. Not surprisingly Khalifah's murderer turned out to be a Muslim who didn't appreciate Khalifa claiming to be a prophet after Muhammad (not to mention a number of other things); after all, like all Muslims this murderer believes Muhammad was the greatest guy who ever lived, and since Muhammad's peerless example included killing people who didn't think as highly of him as he thought of himself, well....

Here is a link: Finding Rashad Khalifa's Killer

Oh yeah, it so happens that it has been nineteen years since the dirty deed was perpetrated; no doubt the Submitters are all abuzz over this. (For those who aren't in the know, the number "19" was a basis for much speculation on Khalifah's part.)

An Open Blog Post To Sami Zaatari: On Genesis 1:26

2009-06-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

Sami, your most recent article on Genesis 1:26, which you wrote to attack the Trinity, is so incredibly bad I am beside myself. I would write a response, but your article doesn't come close to tackling what I have already said on the matter here.

In fact, though there is nothing in your article I haven't already responded to in the paper linked above, I have been meaning to add something else to the section of that article dealing with the Muslim objection for quite some time. Thanks for stirring the pot; I will get right on it.

Update (8/24/09): Instead of adding to my original article, I decided to write an entirely different one dedicated to debunking the "Plural of Majesty" explanation. It includes specific material relevant to showing that such an explanation is not at all available to Muslims. That means it is back to the drawing board for dawagandists like Zaatari. It can be found through the following link: here.

The Logical Precision of the Qur'an: Not!

2009-06-08T08:43:00.001-07:00

“And there are among them illiterates who know not the Book but only lies, and they do but conjecture.” (Shakir, S. 2:78)

This leads to problems like the following:

(1) If such people knew/know that 2+4+2=8, then according to the Qur’an it would be/is a lie, which is absurd. (This might help Muhammad and his followers out of a bind (q.v. Surah 41:9-12), but it would lead to an untold number of other problems.)

(2) If it is true that such people knew/know only lies, then they wouldn't have known/know that they existed/exist. If they did/do know that they existed/exist, then it would have been/is a “lie”, but if their existence was/is a lie, then how did/do they know it since non-existent persons can’t know anything?

(3) It is not possible to “know” only lies, for in the nature of the case a lie can be believed but it cannot be known.

These problems don’t go away even if one tries to restrict the lies “known” by Scriptural illiterates to that which regards “the book”, for once again, it is not possible to know any lies, whether they are about the book or something other than the book. Lies cannot be known. Period. The tenacity of this point also doesn’t go away if one resorts to other translations, for they all yield a similar set of problems.

****Many thanks to PM for alerting me to this****

The World is a Great Big Orphanage; At least According to the Religion of Islam

2009-05-11T23:02:00.001-07:00

Muslims consider themselves to be part of one great big "brotherhood". All those who believe in Allah and in Muhammad as Allah's last and final messenger are regarded as brothers and sisters to one another.

However, Muslims deny the Fatherhood of their god, Allah. So the million dollar question is: "If all Muslims are brothers, then who is their father?"

In response, either Muslims must reckon themselves to be orphans in a lonely world, or own up to the fact that they are sons and daughters of someone else. As the old saying goes, this means they are stuck between the Devil and the deep (lonely) blue sea.

James White, PhD in Islamic Studies

2009-05-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

In the following, Dr. White expresses his intention to pursue a Ph.D. in Islamic studies.

http://www.aomin.org/podcasts/20080110fta.mp3

The irony is that men like Sami, Osama, and other Muslims are the ones who need such an education; Dr. White does quite well debunking them without it. Nevertheless, it is a worthy goal, and I will certainly pray for his studies and most of all the good use he will make of them.

The True Shahada: Defended - Part I & 2

2009-05-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

Introduction

In an article entitled “The True Shahada”, I provided a comparison and contrast between John 17:3, a verse Muslims often see as supportive of their brand of unitarianism, and Islam’s Shahada, which Christians see as a blasphemous denial of the Father and the Son. A Muslim, who prefers to remain nameless – which would otherwise be fine except that in this case it seems calculated to save him (her?) from embarrassment once his underhanded tactics and criminal mishandling of my article was exposed – has provided a “response” to it called “The True Shahada Indeed”, and the reader is encouraged to read both my original article and the purported reply before continuing.

The rest of this article can be read at Answering Islam, at the following link: See Here. For Part Two, See Here. As Always, if you have any thoughts, you may leave them here in the combox.

Craig vs. Hitchens: Debate Review Link

2009-04-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Douglas Geivett has provided a good review of the recent debate between Hitchens and Craig. It can be found here.

Update (4/17/09): By now there are many reviews of the debate besides that provided by Geivett. His was just one of the first since he was at the debate. No need to link to the others, they are easy to find in a search engine.

If you really want to know how it went, check out the following atheist sites.

See John Loftus' post here.

Or you might read this one.

Here is a snippet from the last link for those who are lazy and just want to get to the point:

"Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child."

Good Friday: A Reply to Zaatari

2009-04-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

Sami Zaatari, not one to miss an opportunity, or keep his foot out of his mouth, took a pot shot the other day on what many Christians celebrate as Good Friday, the day that Christ, the Good Shepherd, is widely believed to have laid down His life for His sheep. According to Sami, there is nothing good about this scenario, and the view of many Muslims that Jesus was simply taken up to heaven, allowing one of his disciples to be crucified in his place, and leaving the rest of the disciples behind to fend for themselves, is far better. Christ's words expose Sami's reasoning for what it is:

"11I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep." (John 10)

Sami's article teaches us an important lesson: Christianity is a religion of the Good Shepherd; Islam is a religion of the "Good" Hireling.

TurretinFan and Zawadi

2009-04-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

Over on the Alpha and Omega blog, TurretinFan (aka Tur8infan) has provided a response to Bassam Zawadi regarding the fact that "Mohamed did not know of the currently prevalent Muslim view that the Bible is corrupt." The link is below. Enjoy.

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3236

Easter Links

2009-03-30T20:55:00.001-07:00

Since Easter is coming up and this is when skeptics like to take their yearly shower, put on their good clothes, and appear on TV attacking the Faith, here is a post over at Triablogue that has a great list of Resources For Easter. Enjoy.

Carrier on the Historicity of Christ

2009-03-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

As many know, Carrier recently debated William Lane Craig on the resurrection of Christ. The reports coming in from all sides - atheist and theist (Christian and non-Christian) - say that Craig thoroughly routed him. Indeed, Carrier himself said: "I didn't win the debate", although he goes on to do damage control. (see here)

But all the above was just an excuse to bring up the following, which I thought I would direct people to, where an atheist wrote a very interesting blog entry on a talk that Carrier gave on the historicity of Christ. Do take a gander, it should prove enlightening. Do Not Be Quickly Persuaded

Point of Clarification (3/29/09): In case my promotional remarks above might be misunderstood, I should be up front and say I don't subscribe to all aspects of Craig's apologetic method (nor do I agree with his Social Trinitarianism (as opposed to Latin Trinitarianism) or his Molinism or his view that God became temporal at the creation of the world or a number of other things I could mention), but Craig can still be quite fun to watch, and I haven't seen any unbeliever who has been able to get the best of him in a debate.

Muslim Logic: Is Sami Zaatari Satan?

2009-03-16T09:40:00.001-07:00

Over at Muslim Responses, Sami Zaatari has tried his hand at the commit-as-many-fallacies-as-you-can-in-a-syllogism challenge (this is an unexpressed challenge that many Muslims seem to be aware of, at least if we may judge by their actions). His attempt goes like this:

(1) -A Christian lies
(2) -The Christian clams to have the Holy Spirit
(3) -The Christian claims that the Holy Spirit works through him/her
(4) -The Christian claims that the Holy Spirit guides him/her
(5) -Therefore the Holy Spirit causes the Christian to lie
(6) -The Bible states that satan is a liar and is the father of lies
(7) -The Holy Spirit is satan

[The words are Zaatari's; the numbering is mine - SP]

This argument has two parts. The first part, where (5) is concluded on the basis of (1-4), and the second part, where (7) is concluded on the basis of (5-6).

I won't bother listing all the errors...indeed, that would take away all the fun from others who may want to find some errors on their own, but I will note here that neither (5) nor (7) follow in any wise, even if we grant that all of the premises Zaatari has supplied are true.

The conclusion that the Holy Spirit causes the Christian to lie (5) doesn't follow from the claim that a person has the Holy Spirit who guides and works through him (2-4), at least not on any normal meaning of the relevant terms.

And the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is Satan (7) doesn't follow even if we pretend that Zaatari has established that the Spirit causes a person to lie (5) when taken together with the fact that Satan is the father of lies (6), for just becase Satan is the originator and approver of all lies, doesn't mean that he is the only one who can or does lie.

Simply put: at both stages of his argument Zaatari is guilty of a non-sequitur, asserting something in his conclusion that does not at all follow from his premises.

And by the way, when a person asserts something on the basis of demonstrably faulty reasoning, it is either due to a mistake, or it is intentionally designed to deceive. If the above is chalked up to a mistake in reasoning on Zaatari's part, then it is an egregious one that not even a freshman should make (and surely Zaatari considers himself a step above freshman status); if it is a case of willful deception, then shall we conclude that Zaatari is Satan? Zaatari's reasoning suggests that we should.

Putting all this together would mean that Zaatari is "the Holy Spirit" who in turn is Satan (on Zaatari's reasoning, of course). [And wouldn't this also mean, if we grant the Muslim claim that the angel Gabriel is the Holy Spirit, that Zaatari (i.e. Satan) is the one who brought the "revelation" to Muhammad? Certainly it would.]

Allah, the Great Abstraction

2009-03-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Muslims are fond of pretending that they believe in "pure" monotheism. According to them this means that Allah is absolutely one, not two, not three, not anything beyond the most simple unity. Here is an example of a Muslim source that defines "oneness" or "unity" or "tawheed" in this very way:

"(3) His being is not merely One (wahid but ahad, in which there is no tinge of plurality in any way: He is not a compound being, which may be analysable or divisible. which may have a form and shape, which may be residing somewhere, or may contain or include something, which may have a colour, which may have some limbs, which may have a direction, and which may be variable or changeable in any way. Free from every kind of plurality He alone is a Being Who is Ahad in every aspect. (Here, one should fully understand that the word wahid is used in Arabic just like the word "one" in English. A collection consisting of great pluralities is collectively called wahid or one, as one man, one nation, one country, one world, even one universe, and every separate part of a collection is also called one. But the word Ahad is not used for anyone except Allah. That is why wherever in the Qur'an the word wahid has been used for Allah, He has been called Itah wahid (one Deity), or Allah-ulWahid-al-Qahhar. (One Allah Who is Omnipotent), and nowhere just wahid, for this word is also used for the things which contain pluralities of different kinds in their being. On the contrary, for Allah and only for Allah the word Ahad has been used absolutely, for He alone is the Being Who exists without any plurality in any way, Whose Oneness is perfect in every way. (Tafheemul-Quran)" (source; emphasis mine)

It is on this basis that Muslims strenuously object to the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in essence but still personally distinct. However, if Muslims were consistent with their own definition of "pure monotheism", then they would not go on to speak of Allah having 99 beautiful names and many attributes, for this is to assert a kind of pluarlity in unity that is contrary to their proferred definition.

So which is it, do Muslims believe in the "names" and "attributes" of Allah, or is Allah an undefinable blank, a mere abstraction?

Either choice spells trouble for the followers of Muhammad.

Say Not Three Gods: A Reply to Sami Zaatari And His Counterfeit Trinity

2009-03-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

In an article found here, which the reader is encouraged to look at before continuing with this paper, Muslim apologist Sami Zaatari thinks he has demonstrated that Christians are polytheists rather than monotheists. (Presumably that means it is open season on Christians, and the wonderful blessing of Dhimmi status may be dutifully denied to Christian’s in Muslim lands).

Whatever Zaatari thinks he has shown, I must confess at the outset,....

This article has been moved to the Answering Islam website. To read the rest of it, go here. The comments section will remain open on this blog. Do come back and leave your thoughts.

Shiloh At One Year

2009-02-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

Since our old camera broke, it has been a while since I have provided any updated pictures of our dog as I said I would, especially for those who are interested. Well, we just got a new camera so here are some new pictures. I will try and add more as I get better ones. She is now a year old and approx 120lbs. (That is one of my daughters in the first picture, but she doesn't like me giving out any of her personal info, so I will leave it at that.)

Yusuf Ali's Two Faces

2009-02-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

I hardly think the following words of Yusuf Ali in his commentary on the Qur'an require much comment, so I will refrain except for the following: notice just how close these two notes are to each other. It is bad enough to contradict yourself, but to do it in such a close proximity is even worse.

#4581 "....But this active righting of wrongs, whether by physical or by moral or spiritual means, which are commended as better, is an antithesis to the monkish doctrine, when you are smitten on one cheek, to turn the other also. This would not suppress, but encourage wrongdoing. It is practised by none but poltroons, and is preached only by hypocrites, or men who want to make slaves or [sic, of?] others by depriving them of the power of self-defence. It occurs in two of the four canonical Gospels (Matt. 5:39, and Luke 6:29), but we need not therefore assume that it was preached by Jesus.

#4586 "It is harder to be patient and forgive, and yet to get wrongs righted, as was done by the Holy Prophet than to bluster about and "punish the guilty" or "teach them lessons". It may look like futility or lack of purpose but in reality it is the highest and noblest form of courage and resolution. And it may carry out the purpose of reform and the suppression of evil even better than stern punishment. The gentleness of innocence often "persuades where stronger measures fail." But of course circumstances alter cases, and there is some allowance also to be made for the personal equation of the men you have to deal with: in some cases severity may be called for, but it should be from a strict judicial motive, and not merely from personal anger or spite or lower motive in disguise."

Christian Apologetics: The Broad Strokes of A Biblical Defense of the Faith

2009-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

[Somehow the notes to this article are missing. I will add them as the occasion presents itself. AR]

The Living God

According to the Scriptures: the Triune God, Jehovah, “...is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King (Jer. 10:10).” It was this God who created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1), and everything in them. All created reality - whether material or immaterial, animate or inanimate, personal or impersonal - all of these things, and whatever else exists, were created by His power and for His glory: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him.” (Col. 1:16)

Furthermore, the Scriptures tell us that it is because of (or by) His providence that all created things are upheld and disposed, directed or governed. He upholds all things by the Word of His power and works all things after the counsel of His own will (q.v., Heb. 1: 3; Eph. 1:11).

“While the earth remaineth seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Gen. 8: 22)

“Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the LORD of hosts is his name.” (Jer. 31:35)

Of all the objects of God’s creative activity, man alone was made in His image, in true knowledge, righteousness and holiness. “In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27).” It is put this way in Psalm 139:

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mothers womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (vss. 13-16)

Likewise, of all the works of His continuing care man stands out as the special object of His providence.

“If [God] should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.” (Job 34:14)

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” (Mt. 10:29)

God Has Revealed Himself

Through all of these things - creation, providence and the image of God in man - God has revealed Himself. To put it another way, God has disclosed the truth of His existence through what He has done (i.e., creating the heavens and the earth), what He continues to do (i.e., upholding and governing the world day by day), and through the consciences of men who bear His likeness (which conscience accuses men when they do wrong and excuses them when they do right). In this way, God has and does reveal His eternal power, His supreme wisdom, and His righteous standards of conduct.

King David of ancient Israel poetically expressed the revelational character of the created order in the following way:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. 19:1-4)

“The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the peoples see His glory.” (Ps 97:6)

Not only is the whole of the created order full of the glory of the Lord of Hosts, as we are told in the book of Psalms (q.v., also Is. 6), but the entire course of history - God’s continuing providence, whereby, as we have seen, He upholds and governs the world - constantly bears witness to Him.

“...the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them,...did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14:15,17)

God, being the sovereign Lord and ruler of all, works all things after the counsel of His own will. He is the Lord of history who is everywhere present in all of His glory with all events. There is, therefore, no place where we could go to flee from His presence or the revelation He has given of Himself. God is the unavoidable atmosphere of our lives. This is what the apostle Paul declared to the philosophers of ancient Athens:

“He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:26, 28)

There is no corner of the universe that God did not create and does not uphold and govern, hence, there is no place of escape from the revelation of God.

“…God has never left Himself without a witness to men. He witnessed to them through every fact of the universe from the beginning of time. No rational creature can escape this witness. It is the witness of the triune God whose face is before men everywhere and all the time.” 1

Even if men were able to escape the whole of created reality, and all the motions of God’s providence, they would still be unable to escape the knowledge that God has given of Himself. This is so because men have within themselves (as image bearers), an ineradicable knowledge of their creator.

“There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy...God Himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of His divine majesty."2 This is why David said in Psalm 139, marveling over God’s creation of Himself, “My soul knows very well.” This knowledge has been indelibly written on the heart and consciences of all men.” (Rom 2:15)

“God made man a rational-moral creature. He will always be that. As such he is always confronted by God. He is addressed by God. He exists in the relationship of covenant interaction. He is a covenant being. To not know God man would have to destroy himself. He cannot do this. There is no non-being into which man can slip in order to escape God’s face and voice. The mountains will not cover him; Hades will not hide him. Nothing can prevent his being confronted 'with him with whom we have to do.' Whenever he sees himself, he sees himself confronted with God.”3

The totality of this self-disclosure on the part of God is so perspicuous, so persuasive, and so pervasive that it has come to and gotten through to all men. This knowledge is all around us and within us; it is declared by everything (from all the stars in the heavens to every grain of sand on the seashore), and to everyone (from the learned fool with a Ph.D. in philosophy to the unlearned wise man in the jungle). It would be no more clearly revealed or made known than if everything had “made by God” stamped on it. All men know this truth.

All Knowledge Depends Upon God and His Revelation

All of the foregoing should make it obvious that there is a grand difference between God and us. God is the creator; however, we and everything else are His creatures. God knows us altogether; if we are to know Him He must reveal Himself. God depends upon nothing and yet causes all to depend upon Him. This includes not only life and breath, but also wisdom and knowledge.

Accordingly, all knowledge depends upon the knowledge that God has given of Himself. In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, it is written that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge...(1:7).” In addition, in the New Testament we are told that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ (Col. 2:3).” All knowledge depends upon the existence and revelation of God. Only in fear and submission to the God who has come to expression in the incarnation of Jesus Christ can the fruitful pursuit of knowledge take place. To repeat the words of the apostle, “In Him [God] we live and move and have our being.” He is, so to speak, the intellectual atmosphere of our lives. “He is the intellectual atmosphere that all of us breathe whenever we attempt to be rational or logical, whenever any of us attempt to make human experience intelligible.”4

Mankind Denies the Existence of God

Even as Scripture speaks of the existence of the true God, it also speaks of the universal denial of this truth on the part of unregenerate humanity (all people by nature since the fall). Men say, in an attempt to cast His cords from off them, the Triune God who speaks in Scripture does not exist. This denial, which can be called the non-Christian philosophy of life, expresses itself in various ways. It comes to expression in Atheism on the one hand, Islam on the other, and everything in between (whether they are recognized as other religions or are referred to as competing philosophies). Scripture, history and everyday experience are replete with examples of this denial. This denial is essentially a violation of the first commandment, which negatively prohibits idolatry and positively commands that men recognize and worship the true God. All denials of God are united in their attempt to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. All denials of God are a failure to recognize God as ultimate (instead of the human mind, human experience, etc.), and that we are utterly dependent on Him for all things (whether it is for truth regarding religious matters, “secular” matters, morality or salvation).

Mankind Suppresses the Knowledge of God

In mentally rejecting and verbally denying the existence of the true God, or at least denying any cognitive factual knowledge of His existence, mankind not only calls into question the truth of the above proposition - “The Triune God of Scripture lives” - but, as could be expected, they deny or call into question whether He has revealed Himself. The reason for this, according to the Scriptures, is not because God does not exist and has not revealed Himself, neither is it because His revelation is unclear. We have already seen that the Bible emphatically declares God does exist, He has revealed Himself, and His revelation is manifest to all. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness,...(Jn. 1:4).” In other words, God has lit up the world of human experience with the knowledge of Himself. The reason for the above denial is to be found in men, not in some supposed defect in God’s revelation. For even though “...the light has come into the world” and is plain to everyone, “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed (Jn. 3:19).” Men fight against this revelation, but they have not and cannot overcome it. Mankind’s love of darkness has not extinguished the light, rather, it leaves them condemned for their wicked response to God’s truth.

Mankind is Robbed of Knowledge

In spiritually suppressing and verbally rejecting this clearly revealed knowledge of God - upon which depends all knowledge whatsoever - the unbeliever unwittingly becomes a fool who is robbed of the possibility of justifying his truth claims. All philosophy which does not begin in the fear of Jehovah and is not controlled by His revelation, but rather begins in autonomous reasoning and is controlled by the basic principles (or presuppositions) of this world, are hollow and deceptive according to the Scriptures (Col. 2:8-9). This is one of the reasons why the term “fool” is consistently applied to the unregenerate man throughout the wisdom literature of the Old Testament (Ps. 14:1, 53:1; Pr. 1:7 et.al.), and the phrase “vanity of vanities” is applied to his autonomous way of thinking and philosophy of life (q.v., the book of Ecclesiastes). In fact, this is why the apostle said that unbelievers “...walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart...(Eph. 4:17-18).” Simply put:

"In God’s light we are able to see light (cf. Psalm 36:9). To turn away from intellectual dependence upon the light of God, the truth about and from God, is to turn away from knowledge to the darkness of ignorance."5

Self Deception

As we have seen, Scripture says that God exists and yet men deny Him. Scripture says that God has revealed Himself and yet men reject any awareness of this revelation. Scripture says that all knowledge depends upon knowing God, and yet men claim to know many things independently of Him and the revelation He has given of Himself. Is it true, then, that men do not truly believe in God, are not aware of His revelation, and do still genuinely know many things? The answer is “yes” and “no.” The Scriptures themselves declare that men both believe in (or know) God, and that they do not believe in (or know) God; they declare that men are aware of His revelation and yet are ignorant of it; they declare that they do know things and yet do not truly know anything. How could this be? The answer: men are self-deceived. They believe one thing about God, His revelation, and knowledge and they believe another thing about themselves and their relationship to these truths. They are walking contradictions. They live in opposition, not only to God and the world He has made but to themselves as well. As the Scripture says, they “oppose themselves”. Men believe about God, in their heart of hearts, that He exists. Yet, they believe something else about themselves; namely, they believe that they do not believe in His existence. They have received His revelation and yet they suppress it in unrighteousness. They do know things to the extent that they rely on the knowledge of God that they have; they do not know things to the extent that they rely on that by which they suppress the knowledge of God. It is this concept of self-deception that is in view in Romans when the apostle Paul declares that men know God, and that they exchange the truth of God for a lie.

"According to Romans 1:18-21, unbelievers actually know God in their heart of hearts (v. 21). Indeed, that which is known of God is evident within them so that they are without excuse for their professed unbelief (vv. 19-20). Since He is not far from any of us, even pagan philosophers cannot escape knowing Him (cf. Acts 17:27-28). What unbelievers do is “suppress the truth in un-righteousness” (Rom 1:18). They are guilty of self-deception. Although in one sense they very sincerely deny knowing God or being persuaded by His revelation, they nevertheless are mistaken in this denial. In fact, they do know God, they are persuaded by His revelation of Himself, and they now are doing whatever they can to keep that truth from sight and to keep from dealing honestly with their maker and judge. Rationalization and any number of intellectual games will be enlisted to convince themselves and others that God’s revelation of Himself is not to be believed. In this way unbelievers, who genuinely know God (in condemnation), work hard - even if habitually (and in that sense unconsciously) - to deceive themselves into believing that they do not believe in God or the revealed truth about Him."6

It is this radical self deception that makes it possible for the unbeliever to know God (because He has revealed Himself), and thus know other things (since all knowledge depends on knowing Him), and yet not truly know God (because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness), and thus be ignorant of everything (since His is existence is the precondition of intelligibility). As long as the unbeliever is inconsistent with His denial of God and God’s revelation, then knowledge is possible; conversely, as long as, and to the extent that the unbeliever is consistent with his denial of God and God’s revelation, then knowledge is impossible.

Summary and Conclusion

All of the ideas that are presented above can be seen as an extended look at what the apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans. The apostle tells us:

"The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all un-godliness and un-righteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,...Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness,...For this reason God gave them up to vile passions...And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind,..." (Rom 1:18-22, 24, 26, 29).

In this one place, the apostle Paul gathers together all the essential points that have already been sketched above. God exists and has “revealed,” “manifested,” and “shown” His “invisible attributes,” “eternal power,” and “divine nature” to men. This knowledge has gotten through to and is known by everyone; it is something that has been “clearly seen” and “understood” so as to leave everyone “without excuse.” Mankind is said to have dealt unthankfully and ungratefully with this revelation of the power and goodness of God their Creator. They are said to have “refused to retain God in their knowledge,” and to have “suppressed the truth” about Him. The result of all this is said to be that God’s wrath rests upon such wickedness and is already being executed in this life. A couple of the ways in which this is seen is in his giving them over to the depravity of their own rebellious hearts and the futility of their apostate and autonomous thinking. In rebelling against God and rejecting His revelation, men and women are under the wrath of God and have unwittingly become fools. They have destroyed themselves, not just personally but epistemically as well.

It is the task of the Christian apologist, then, to show the non-believer that his unbelieving worldview would - in principle, if held to consistently - destroy the possibility of knowing anything, even the possibility of knowing that we could not know anything. It is further our task to show that the only hope of salvation from the sinful foolishness of unbelief, a foolishness that attends every form of the non-Christian philosophy of life, rests in a change of mind towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only in the God who has come to expression in Jesus Christ can one find not only righteousness, sanctification, and redemption but wisdom as well.b

Hear, O Muslims!

2009-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Introduction

A number of Muslims point to the Shema – originally found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and quoted by Jesus in the New Testament accounts of the Gospel (Mark 12:29-30; and Lk. 10:27) – as evidence for the antiquity and universality of Islam as well as for its continuity with prior revelation.[1] In the view of these Muslims, the Shema corresponds to and confirms, even as it is thought to be confirmed by, their confession of faith, the Shahada, as well as other teachings of the Qur’an that are held to explicate this confession. No doubt the motivation for this stems in part from Muhammad’s claim that the Qur’an is a confirmation of what came before it in the Torah and the Gospel (e.g. S. 3:3).

Notwithstanding the above, the Shema found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the Shahada which Muslims splice together from contextually unrelated verses of the Qur’an (and/or from post-Quranic traditions), stand in total contrast to one another, putting those who look to the Shema as proof for their contentions on the horns of a dilemma.

To read the rest of this article, please go to the Answering Islam website found here. After reading it in full, come back and leave your comment.

Muhammad, Just the Last of Many?

2008-12-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

Although Muhammad incautiously took several fateful steps in what he chose to relate of the true story of Christ in the Qur'an, often showing Jesus’ exalted character in spite of the overall spirit of Muhammadan revelation that was evidently calculated to denigrate Christ’s divinity and transcendent dignity, it is nevertheless clear that Muhammad held exceptionally high views of himself and wanted others to do the same. In spite of this, it is common to hear many of the rank and file among Muslims saying that they hold all prophets to be on an equal footing, with none being greater or less than another. Just how they can read Muhammad’s self-flattering remarks and arrive at such a conclusion is beyond me, especially when you consider that many of his claims go well beyond teaching that he is simply greater than the prophets, and, in some cases, are difficult to distinguish from the rankest of pagan idolatry.

Of course it is usually westernized Muslims or Muslim apologists to the West who make such humble claims for Muhammad, saying that he was nothing more than one of many prophets, none of whom stand out with any distinction above the others, all the while contentedly leaving the bulk of the worlds Muslims to hang on Muhammad’s every word, judgment, and action, even down to such trivial matters as what side of their body they sleep on or what direction they urinate in. Notwithstanding that, the point of this post is not to ascertain the upper limits of how Muhammad wanted his followers to regard him, or how far he wanted them to go in their fetishism, but simply to show that Muhammad, at least according to such revered Muslim authorities as Yusuf Ali, did maintain that he was eminently greater than all other prophets, including Abraham, the friend of God (Khalil Allah), Moses, to whom God spoke directly (Kalim Allah), and even Jesus, the Word of God.

The following are given in the order they appear in Yusuf Ali’s commentary of the Qur’an.

“…In Muhammad’s mission these [Moses, David, Joshua, Jesus] and other characters were combined. Gentler than Jesus, he organized on a vaster scale than Moses, and from Madinah he ruled and gave laws, and the Qur’an has a vaster scope than the Psalms of David. (Cf. 2:285).” #289

“Belief in the Prophethood of Muhammad (peace be on him) is thus an integral part and a logical corollary of belief in Allah.” #779

“In this verse is a prefiguring, to Moses, of the Arabian Messenger, the last and greatest of the Messengers of Allah.” #1127

“Out attention having been directed to various prophets, who were sent with missions to their several peoples, and in each of whose careers there is some prefigurement of the life of the last and greatest of them, we are now asked to listen to the proclamation of Muhammad’s universal mission.” #1131

“That the last and greatest of the Prophets should arise among them [the Arabs], and they and their language be made the vehicle of the new, full and universal light, has also a meaning, which is explained in C. 12-16.” #1132

“It is a necessity of a Prophet’s soul that he should speak out and teach all that he knows, to worthy and unworthy alike. This, Jacob did to his unworthy sons, as well as to his worthy sons whom he loved best. It was not for him as a Prophet to guarantee any results. In this case he could not save his sons from getting into trouble merely because they followed the letter of his advice in a small matter. Apply this to the teaching of one who is greater than Jacob. Men who literally observe some small injunctions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad and neglect the greater principles which he taught cannot blame him for their troubles and difficulties. If they examined the matter, they would find that they brought the troubles on themselves.” #1732

“Cf. 2:49. The reference back to Israel and Moses serves a double purpose – as an appeal to the People of the Book, and as a reminder to the Quraysh of the favour now conferred on them by the coming among them of a greater Prophet than Moses.” #1878

“Now we come to the time of our Holy Prophet. In spite of all the past, the Jews could still have obtained Allah’s forgiveness if they had not obstinately rejected the greatest of the Prophets also. If they were to continue in their sins, Allah’s punishment would also continue to visit them.” #2181

“To the Prophet was to be assigned in the Hereafter the highest Post of Honour and Glory – the Maqam Mahmud implying his excellence above all other Prophets. The immediate reference may be to the hope that the Makkan persecution will soon be over and the glorious work in Madinah will begin. (R).” #2278

“Here is a Prophet and a Book, greater than Moses and his Book. Are you going to reject him and it? (R).” #2711

"....But 'man' in this connection is understood to mean the Leader of man, the noblest of mankind, Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah...." #3943
“The People of the Book immediately referred to are the Jews and the Christians, who had received scriptures in the same line of prophecy in which came our Holy Prophet. There scriptures should have prepared them for the advent of the greatest and last of the Prophets…” #6221

A Reducio of a Muslim "spoof text" Against the Integrity of the Bible

2008-12-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Disturbed by the fact that their prophet assumed that his message was consistent with prior revelation, or that his chimera would not be found out, at least not until it was too late to be of any consequence for him, Muslims have trumped up the claim that the Bible has been corrupted over time and have interpreted certain passages of their own Qur'an in this way. One such passage can be found in Surah 15:89-90, which says the following:

"And say: 'I am indeed he that warneth openly and without ambiguity (of just such wrath) as We sent down on those who divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts)'"

In a footnote to these verses, Yusuf Ali says the following:

"...Verse 90, I think, refers to the Jews and Christians, who took out of Scripture what suited them, and ignored or rejected the rest: 2:85 and 101..."

But if, on the one hand, the teaching of these verses are to be taken as an indication that the originally authentic revelations of God found in the Old and New Testaments have been falsified, corrupted, watered-down, or otherwise rendered something less than the sure and certain truth of God without any admixture of error, then the same conclusion would have to be drawn for the Qur'an, for here is how the passage reads along with more of the context:

"And say: 'I am indeed he

That warneth openly

And without ambiguity"-

(of just such wrath)

As We sent down

On those who divided

(Scripture into arbitrary parts)-

(So also on such)

As have made the Qur'an

Into shreds (as they please).

On the other hand, if the fact that the Qur'an can be and was "made...into shreds" does not mean that it has been altered or transmuted from the absolutely perfect word of God that Muslims claim it is, then neither does this passage teach that the Bible has been so altered simply because there were those who "divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts)." And if this verse teaches that the Bible is, in its present form, the Word of God (as it certainly is), then that means that the Qur'an that it contradicts is not.

(There is another interesting observation to be made regarding the above. Not only does Y.A.'s translation and commentary result in an obvious and unacceptable absurdity for Muslims, but it appears from a comparison of Y.A. with other translations that it is Muslims like Y.A. who are actually guilty of dividing and shredding their own Scriptures, for the idea that these ayas are talking about the Bible at all simply cannot be found in the translations of others such as Pickthall, Shakir, and Hilali.)

Genesis 19:24 Trinity Article!

2008-12-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

The promised article on the Trinity from Genesis 19:24 is now available here. Leave your comments in the comments section if you have any.

A Foretaste of Things to Come

2008-11-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

I have two articles in the works that should be avaialable in the relatively near future. The first is another article on the Trinity and can be expected sooner than the second. The introduction to that article can be read here.

The second is Part II of my "Do Not Be Afraid of Him", the first part of which can be accessed here.

For a little taste of Part II, keep reading.

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II

Introduction

Having shown in Part One that the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18 was not and could not have been speaking of Muhammad, it remains only to show that the passage really pointed to and was fulfilled in the fullest sense by the Lord Jesus Christ.

As was already pointed out, whatever else may or may not be true of the coming prophet, and whatever other points of comparison there may or may not be between him and Moses, the Chosen One has to be like Moses in at least the following three ways in order to meet the terms of the prophecy: a) he has to be an Israelite; b) he has to speak directly with God; and, c) he has to have a divinely attested ministry marked by miraculous signs and awesome deeds. These are the sine qua non of the prophecy, the bare necessities. If a prophet comes and puts forward all manner of other credentials, however impressive, but fails to meet even one of the aforementioned criteria, let alone all three, he is not that prophet. However, provided a person does in fact meet these criteria, other considerations or comparison may most certainly be made, especially if the points of correspondence are of such an unusual and striking nature as to virtually demand that we see a link between them.

Accordingly, the following will lay out how the Lord Jesus exactly fulfills the terms of the prophecy, and how other points of correspondence between the life and ministry of Moses and Jesus are so arresting that we are compelled to view Moses’ life as a providentially ordered and divinely revealed type or foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The fact that Muhammad did not meet any of the given criteria renders null and void all of the comparisons that Muslims like to draw between Moses and Muhammad. But even if such comparisons are admitted into the discussion, they are easily trounced by those that are found in the case of the Lord Jesus.

Trinity Article Now Available!

2008-11-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

For those who are interested, my article on the Trinity has recently been posted on the Answering Islam website. It is fifty pages long, and consists of both a positive defense of a Trinitarian interpretation of Genesis 1:26 (and other related passages from the Old Testament) as well as a refutation of popular non-Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian interpretations of those passages. It can be found here.

Circumcision Is Now Baptism

2008-10-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

The sacraments of the Old Testament in regard to the spiritual things thereby signified and exhibited, were, for substance, the same with those of the new - WCF 27:5

What circumcision was to God's people prior to the coming of Christ, baptism is to God's people after the coming of Christ. At least three lines of evidence exist showing such equivalence or correspondence.

a. It Can Be Legitimately Deduced or Inferred From the Parallels Between How They Were Observed:

Circumcision was administered only once, a fact that should be painfully obvious. Likewise baptism only takes place once - at the start of the Christian life. Contrast this with the Passover, which was done often (Lev. 23:5; Ex. 12:14), and the Lord's Supper which replaced it (1 Cor. 11:25-26).

Circumcision was administered to old covenant believers and their households (Gen. 17:7-14, 27) just as new covenant believers and their households are to be baptized (Acts 10:7, 16:15, 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:16-17). Contrast this with the Levitical Passover which permitted access to mature (those capable of discerning whether they were "clean" or not) professors only, as does the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:28-29).

Circumcision could be administered extemporaneously by a priest, without the whole assembly being present (Lk. 1:57-59, 2:21-39), a fact that follows easily enough from the observation that it was done eight days after a child's birth (Sabbath or not). The same is true of baptism which is performed by a minister, usually at the nearest convenient place to where conversion took place (Acts 8:12-13, 35-38, 9:17-19, 10:44-48, 16:14-15, 22-34, 18:8, 19:1-7, 22:12-16). Contrast this with Passover which only took place when God's people were gathered together at the appointed time and place (Deut 16:1-8), as also is the case with the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11)

b. It Can Be Legitimately Inferred From the Equivalence of Meaning That Both Had/Have.

Circumcision was a sign of inclusion or entrance into the Covenant Community (Gen. 17:10-11), thus serving as a boundary marker between those who belonged to God and those who did not (Gen. 34:1ff; Jdgs. 14:3; 1 Sam. 14:6, 17:26, 36, 31:4; 2 Sam. 1:20; Ezek. 28:10; Eph. 2:11-12). The same is true of baptism (1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:26-29).

Circumcision was an outward sign that indicated an inward reality (Rom. 2:28-29), a reality called for of those who had been circumcised (Deut. 10:16; Jer. 4:4; Ezek. 44:7); it indicated the need for a new heart, a clean heart (Ex. 6:12; Lev. 26:41; Isa. 52:1; Acts 26:41). The same is true of baptism (Jn. 3:3ff; Tit. 3:5).

Circumcision was a sign of repentance or of the need for repentance (Jer. 9:25), even as baptism has always been associated with repentance, from the baptism of John (Mt. 3:11; Mk. 1:4; Lk. 3:3; Acts 13:24, 19:4) to Christian baptism (Acts 2:38).

Circumcision was a sign and seal of the forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of faith; it did not automatically save anyone but testified to God's saving grace received through faith (Rom. 4:9-12). The same is true of baptism (Acts 22:16; Pet. 3:21-22).

Circumcision was administered on the eighth day (Gen. 17:12; Lev. 12:3; Lk. 1:59; Acts 7:8), which is the first day of a new week. In this way it indicated a new beginning and thus typified the new creation. Similarly, insofar as baptism identifies one with Christ in His death and resurrection, it indicates a new beginning, a putting off of the old in order to walk in "newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). Thus baptism is antitypical of circumcision.

c. There is Explicit Scriptural Testimony to the Effect That Baptism is New Covenant Circumcision.

"For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead" (Col. 2:9-12).

The true circumcision, circumcision of the heart, what Paul here explains as a "removal of the body of the flesh", is equated with baptism. Just like the rite of circumcision signified the need to die to the flesh and rise to newness of life, so likewise baptism for the Christian signifies union with Christ in His death and resurrection, i.e., a dying to the old man and a rising to the new. Romans 6:1-6 makes this incontrovertible.

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part 1

2008-09-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Given that many others have done this before, the following aims to be a (relatively) short but pungent reply to the Muslim claim that Muhammad's coming was prophesied in Deuteronomy 18.

This article has been moved to the Answering Islam website. To read the rest of it, go here. The comments section will remain open for anyone who wants to comment.

Please Help My Muslim Friend

2008-09-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

The other day I mentioned that I have been engaged in several different discussions, and thought it might be beneficial to redirect one of the conversations here (which I have been having with a Muslim), continuing it on the blog rather than through private correspondence. In this way, not only can others read and benefit, but other Muslims might be able to join in as well and help my Muslim friend out. He is having a terrible time proving his case.

I have been asking him for proof that Muhammad was a prophet. At the same time he has been calling on me to prove that Jesus was/is God.

As for the former, I have maintained that there is no proof that Muhammad was a prophet sent by God, insofar as there are no bona-fide predictions from the former prophets witnessing to Muhammad's coming, insofar as Muhammad made no accurate predictions himself that could only come from God, and insofar as Muhammad performed no miracles or otherwise pointed to any sign from God that is commensurate with proving the claim that "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah". In short, I have maintained that there is no independent proof of Muhammad's prophethood that is consistent with the sorts of confirmatory signs that the former prophets came with, or some other proof that he can provide that cannot come from anyone other than God.

I have also shown that his case is greatly compounded by the fact that, although some prophets did not perform miracles, as he rightly pointed out, their coming was either prophesied or otherwise attested by God in some way, such as through another God-confirmed prophet, and, together with this, that the Qur'an itself obligates Muslims to find just such proof, i.e. proof in the prior Scriptures for Muhammad.

As for the latter challenge, his challenge to me to show that Jesus was/is God, I supplied many verses. Of course, he made the artificial restriction common to Muslims that confirmation of Christ's deity from the Scriptures had to be: 1) made by Jesus Himself not the prophets before him, or the apostle's who were commissioned to speak in His name (What gives, I thought Muslims believed in the previous prophets and made no distinction between any of them?); and 2) it had to be direct and explicit, i.e. it couldn't be the sort of thing where Jesus received or positively commended someone else for saying or responding to Him in a way only appropriate for deity.

Of course, I do not except this methodology, for I believe that the former prophets spoke from God, as did the apostle's, something Muslims (in their own muddled way) pay lip-service to but never carry out in their practice. Nevertheless, I have sought to be magnanimous and so have happily obliged my Muslim friend and submitted myself to these strictures for the time being.

Accordingly, my first proof that Christ Himself, in His own person, from His own lips, in a direct and explicit fashion, claimed to be God is from Revelation 1, where it is written: "7 BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen. 8 'I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'"

Regarding this passage, my Muslim friend has, as yet, made no comment. In the course of our conversation we have spoken of various and sundry other things as well, such as prostration in prayer, fasting, textual integrity of the Bible and the Qur'an and more. But the foregoing topics have been at the heart of our conversation and have taken up the bulk of our correspondence.

I wrote my Muslim friend and told him I was redirecting things here, and welcome him or any other Muslim to comment and help him out. I also welcome anyone else into this discussion who wishes to comment. My Muslim friend is also free, provided these topics are not skirted, to bring up any of the other subjects we have talked about or that he would like to initiate a discussion on.

I look forward to what he (or anyone else) has to say.

To the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them (Isaiah 8).

And remember We gave Moses the Scripture and the Criterion (between right and wrong), there was a chance for you to be guided aright. (Qur'an, S. 2:53, Yusuf Ali)

I Am Here, Even Though I Have Been Silent

2008-09-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

Pardon my prolongued silence; I have been very busy with assorted things. More posts are coming in the near future.

Among other things, I have been carrying on a correspondence with an atheist and two different Muslims. Perhaps I will post something soon inspired by those conversations.

I have also been busy with things related to our recent move. We are presently living with my wife's father (where our dog, Shiloh, has been creating work for me in the backyard, such as pulling up the sprinkler system and other fun stuff) as we await the completion of our new house.

Last night my wife and I went to see the show "Stomp Out Loud" at Planet Hollywood, which I would recommend to anyone visiting the Las Vegas area (or who lives here in Las Vegas). The Lord caused it to be an enjoyable event, even though I am not generally a big fan of loud noise.

The Myth of the Black Jesus

2008-08-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

The other day while I was working, I couldn't help but overhear a gentlemen spew forth all sorts of hate-filled, racially-charged rhetoric cloaked in the guise of Islam. From what he was saying, it was evident that he was not so much a Muslim - although he did mention the Qur'an, Muhammad, and other Islamic buzzwords - as he was a follower of Louis Farakahn.

As he was attempting to indoctrinate another man, he was trying to use the Bible like a wax nose that he could mold to fit the face he was trying to sculpt, in this case, a racist one. Along the way, one of the points he labored to make was that Jesus was a black man, and that mean old whitie had hidden this fact, molding instead a Jesus to European liking in an attempt to get the superior black man to bow down and worship inferior white-devils.

In contradistinction to what this man was saying, the historical record tells us that Jesus was a first century, Middle Eastern Jewish man from the tribe of Judah, and, thus, that he was neither African nor European, a fact that stands written today the same as it has in all past ages (though it does have to be granted that pictorial representations of Christ produced by Christians have not always done justice to this fact). But the most interesting thing that occurred to me, is that the kind of thinking typified by this man actually undermines Islam (for all those who share this man's racist-driven assumptions), whether it be the old fashioned orthodox kind found in mainstream Islam or the peculiar version advocated by Wallace Fard, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis Farakahn. After all, according to sacred, authoritative Islamic tradition, the Muslim prophet Muhammad said the following about Jesus:

"Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: Allah's Apostle said, "I saw myself (in a dream) near the Kaaba last night, and I saw a man with whitish red complexion, the best you may see among men of that complexion having long hair reaching his earlobes which was the best hair of its sort, and he had combed his hair and water was dropping from it, and he was performing the Tawaf aroud the Kaaba while he was leaning on two men or on the shoulders of two men. I asked, 'Who is this man?' Somebody replied, '(He is) Messiah, son of Mary'" (Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 87, #128).

For more, see here.

Why Bertrand Russel Was Not A Philosopher: Always Learning and Never Able to Come to a Knowledge of the Truth

2008-08-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

The field of philosophy is chock full of disagreements. There are even disagreements on what philosophy itself is and what it is to be a philosopher. In the face of such pervasive, and, on some accounts, insoluble problems some have gone so far as to set their hopes on exobiological beings to deliver us.[1]

Since Bertrand Russell had more opinions than the average man,[2] and since he could (if you ask him) leap tall philosophical problems in a single bound, we should not be surprised that some have looked to him as just the kind of hero we need.[3] Confident as Russell was that he could swoop down on any situation, he, too, offered an answer on what philosophy and philosophers were all about. It is just here, though, right when we might have thought that we found someone to deliver us from our common (fallen?) human predicament, that we have instead the beginning of a long list of proofs that Russell was suppressing his true, and quite unphilosophical, identity. He said:

"Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is matter”? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? If there is a way of living that is noble, in what does it consist, and how shall we achieve it? Must the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving towards death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but that very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy."[4]

The above quote all too easily demonstrates that reason - on Russell’s own account of it - is incapable of answering fundamental questions. Theology could not help Russell because he did not have confidence in its pronouncements; science, too, was of precious little help, because such things are outside its sphere and competence altogether.

In other words, there is knowledge to be found in science, but only of a relatively trivial sort, i.e., not on ultimate questions; on ultimate questions we only have the confident but surely mistaken pronouncements of theology. And as for speculative reason, autonomous reason, reason humanistically construed and utilized, no answers have been forthcoming either. This means that on the map of human inquiry, philosophy is a kind of Lost Lane. It is a knowledge free zone. It is a zone where important questions are studied, but no answers have been discovered, at least not by Bertrand Russell. Thus instead of possessing extraordinary logical powers capable of transcending long-standing conundrums, we learn here that Russell’s feet were fastened to the earth as much as anyone’s; perhaps more so.

Although at this point we might still be magnanimous and consider Russell a philosopher, the above does at least reveal that he was the kind of philosopher who was more of a mild-mannered reporter of questions to which, along with all other covenant-breakers, he did not have any answers.[5]

It might be asked, however, if philosophy does not give us the answers that we refuse to accept from theology, why did a man like Russel ever leave Smallville (science) with its facts, trivial as they are? And why did Russell still demonstrate such affection for Lost Lane (i.e., Russell’s No Man’s Land). To this, Russell responds:

"It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it."[6]

Astoundingly, what Russell appears to be saying here is that we should ask questions, but never actually get around to answering them; to answer them is to be dogmatic, and dogmatism is as deadly as kryptonite to “philosophers” like Russell. This kind of deep-seated antipathy against knowledge and wisdom ought to be seen as the real enemy of philosophy. What is this (by Jorel!) but dogmatism against knowledge?

Whereas we might gratuitously refer to an interrogater as a philosopher, what should we call someone who is, in principle, opposed to all answers? Such a dogmatic reusal from the outset to actually find knowledge and wisdom ought to be seen as its own refutation and disabuse us of the view that what we have is a philosopher on our hands.

As paradoxical as it may seem, all of this reveals that Bertrand Russell, Mr. Worldly Wise of the Twentieth Century, was not, in fact, a philosopher (i.e., a lover of knowledge/wisdom). Russell turns out, as said, to be nothing more than a mild-mannered reporter of questions to which he did not have answers and to which he was committed in advance, to never finding the answers. Who will save us from such “philosophers”? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom are deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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[1] Perhaps the most famous example of this is Carl Sagan, whose telos for living was the search for extraterrestrial life, which, he believed, held the answers to the cosmos with all its riddles. See William Poundstone’s book, Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos (New York: Henry Holt an Company, 1999).
[2] Paul Johnson, in his Intellecutals (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 197, says of Russell, “[Throughout the course of his life] he put forth a steady stream of counsel, exhortation, information and warnings on an astonishing variety of subjects. One bibliography…lists sixty-eight books…he published works on geometry, philosophy, mathematics, justice, social reconstruction, political ideas, mysticism, logic, Bolshevism, Chiana, the brain, industry, the ABC of atoms…science, relativity, education, skepticism, marriage, happiness, morals, idleness, religion, international affairs, history, power, truth, knowledge, authority, citizenship, ethics, biography, atheism, wisedom, the future, disarmament, peace, war crimes and other topics. To these should be added a huge output of newspaper and magazine articles embracing every conceivable them, not excluding The Use of Lipstick, the Manners of Tourists, Choosing Cigars and Wife-Beating.”
[3] In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature as “the champion of humanity and freedom of thought.”
[4] Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, p. xiii-xiv
[5] Russell evidences this same failure throughout his other writings. As one other example, in an article on “Appearance and Reality”, after concluding that, for all our efforts to know the truth about things, Russell says that all we really achieve is the modest insight that “things are not what they seem”. He goes on to say: “Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life”. As found in Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 16
[6] Ibid, p. xiv

The LORD is our Helper and Keeper

2008-08-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.
The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forever.

Exposition of Psalm 121

Vs. 1 The psalmist begins with a question: “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come?” Commentators differ, but as far as it stands I see this as a rhetorical question; the answer is implied. It’s implied by the first part, when the psalmist says “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains.” By saying he will lift up his eyes to the mountains, he aims to communicate the kind of help and the kind of helper he has in mind. In order to understand this, you must keep in mind the literary genre of the Psalms. The Psalms are Hebrew poetry. One of the features of Hebrew poetry is that everyday things are loaded with meaning - God-given, Spirit-inspired, meaning. Literal earthly things, like mountains, hills, and rocks are treated as symbols and pointers to extra-earthly realities, especially things pertaining to God. Consider for example Psalm 125:1-2: “Those who trust in the LORD are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.” The psalmist lifts up his eyes to the mountains, for they remind Him of God. Even as the mountains cannot be moved (by men), God cannot be moved. As the mountains abide forever (relative to other things), God abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so God encloses, encircles, and enfolds His people.

Vs. 2 In any case, rhetorical or not, the psalmist quickly answers his own question in verse two, removing all doubt: “My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.”

The confidence expressed in this psalm is not abstract; it’s personal. The psalmist does not merely say that God is able to help; he says God is His help. He does not merely suggest God’s capacity to help, he appropriates, through faith, that God is His helper. [The great Reformer Martin Luther said the Christian faith consists in pronouns. By this he meant it is not enough merely to say Christ died for sinners; to be a Christian means being able to say, Christ died for me. In relation to our psalm, the point is this: true faith means being able to say God is my helper, my keeper.]

But now, what ground does the psalmist have for believing that God is his help? Very simple: God is not only the psalmist’s Creator, but the psalmist's “LORD.” The word LORD here is not just any name for God; it is Yahweh in Hebrew, God’s covenant name. The psalmist is in covenant with the Maker of heaven and earth. And just because he is in covenant with God, he is sure and certain that all is well with his soul. For God does not break His covenant, His oath. God cannot lie. He has promised to be a God to those who fear Him, the savior and protector of those who call on His name. The covenant faithfulness of God grounds the psalmist’s hope.

Vs. 3-8 A significant thing happens in verse three...two things, really. First, notice how the psalmist was speaking of himself in verses one and two, but starting in verse three to the end of the psalm a shift takes place. Now in verse three he starts talking about others; namely, all those who are in covenant with God. Look at the contrast: in verses one and two he says, “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” But starting in verse three he begins to speak to all God’s people: “He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” God’s covenant faithfulness is wider than the psalmist; it embraces and looks after others. God’s providential care is not just individual, it is corporate. God is not only the keeper of individuals as such, but the keeper of His people as a whole. God is my keeper à God is your keeper à God is our keeper: Israel. The psalmist is no lone ranger; he recognizes that to be in covenant with God is also to be in covenant with all those who share such confidence in God. This is instructive for us in many ways. We live in a day when people think they can love and serve God all on their own. They don’t need to gather together with the people of God, uniting their voices with others in prayer and song, corporately attending to the preaching of the word, partaking of the Lord’s Supper, fellowshipping with one another, looking after each others needs, carrying each others burdens, etc. This is far from the truth. The church, the body of Christ is one of the means God uses to help and keep us. I believe it was Ambrose (or was it Augustine?) who said, “He who does not have the church for his mother, does not have God for his Father.” He spoke truly. It is for good reason that God's people confess those words towards the end of the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy universal church, the communion of saints…”

Second, notice how the psalmist moves from declaring the fact that God is the keeper of His people (in verses 1-2), to explain what it means to say God is His people’s keeper (in verses 3-8). God so watches over His people that He superintends their every movement: He won’t allow them to slip, (verse 3). God’s watch over His people is without intermission: “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep (verse 4).” He so watches over His people that he even controls the environment for their good: “The Sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night (verse 6).” He so watches over His people that no evil can overtake their soul and imperil their salvation: “The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul (verse 7).” In short, the Lord so comprehensively watches over His people that He governs and directs the whole course of their lives: “The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever (verse 8).”

God leaves nothing to chance; chance is a figment of the secular imagination. God is our help; chance is helpless. Thou shalt have no other God, chance included.

Our God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne

Thy saints have dwelt secure;

Sufficient is Thine arm alone,

And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,

Or earth received her frame,

From everlasting Thou art God,

To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,

“Return, ye sons of men:”

All nations rose from earth at first,

And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight

Are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night

Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,

With all their lives and cares,

Are carried downwards by the flood,

And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly, forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand

Pleased with the morning light;

The flowers beneath the mower’s hand

Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Be Thou our guard while troubles last,

And our eternal home.

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Our Decision To Homeschool: A Letter To Family and Friends

2008-08-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

The following is a letter I wrote some time ago on behalf of myself and my wife, expressing the why and the what of our decision to homeschool our kids.

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Since some of you, our family and friends, have expressed everything from disagreement to mild curiosity at our decision to educate our children at home instead of turning them over to the state or to a state certified agency, we offer the following account of just what it is we are doing and why.

1. Above all else, our decision to homeschool flows out of our commitment to the Lord our God and to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Since the Lord both made and redeemed us, we, together with our children, belong to Him. Since He revealed Himself and His will, we have neither the prerogative nor the desire to turn aside either to the right or to the left. The reasons connected with this are the following:

The Bible recognizes (at least) three governmental institutions: the family, the church, and the state. The onus of educating and bringing up children in the fear and admonition of the Lord belongs to parents. The job of the church is to preach the Gospel, build up believers in the faith, and administer the sacraments (baptism and communion) of the New Covenant. The job of the state is to establish a just civil order and peace in society by punishing criminals and providing for the common defense. Not only does God in the Bible not give such authority or calling to ecclesiastical or civil officers, or to the oversight of those operating in terms of regulations and standards devised by the same, it positively rules it out.

A way of saying this simply is that parents have been given the "rod of instruction/discipline", whereas the Church and the State have been given the "keys of the kingdom" and the "power of the sword", respectively. Christians are called to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. This does not mean that Caesar (i.e., the State or powers that be) is not under God; rather, it means that the civil magistrates power and authority are derived and therefore limited to their own God ordained sphere of action. Beyond this the state may not go, and neither may the individual, the family, or the church encroach upon those things laid to the charge of the state by God. Each institution has its own God ordained task and authority and is not to usurp that authority which God has reserved to Himself alone, or which He has delegated to another individual or institution. [I know that some unbelievers would scoff at this way of setting things up, but it is ironic, isn't it, that secularists who love flouting and abusing the notion of a "separation of church and state", don't recognize this Christian-borne idea when it is truly in front of them, as it is here?).

2. An additional reason closely related to the above, at least for us as Christian parents concerned about the covenantal nurture of our children, is that the present direction of the state is not neutral regarding the above claims, which would be bad enough in our eyes, but is positively hostile to them.

For those who think that state education is neutral on "religious" matters and only speaks to issues of "secular" concern, a distinction we do not recognize, we would point out that the attempt to be neutral is itself impossible and supremely disobedient. It is impossible, for all reasoning or thinking must begin somewhere, with some fundamental or ultimate starting point, it must proceed according to some method, and it will necessarily be directed to some end or goal. Christians recognize that these things are established and determined for us by God speaking in Scripture, whereas for non-Christians they are thought to be established by some other "god" or by men who fashion themselves to be autonomous. Please observe: grounding these things on the word of some other "god" or that of would-be autonomous man or an institution of men is inconsistent with our conviction that the Biblical God is the true God and that no one can exist or live their lives independently of Him, not even those who blissfully live their lives suppressing this truth. In God we live and move and have our being, for of Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. By Him all things were made and in Him all things subsist.

The attempt to be neutral is also disobedient from the Christian perspective. In the book of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Moses successor, issued the following directive: "Choose you this day whom you will serve", God or someone/something else. The prophet Elijah said: "Don't waiver between two opinions, if the LORD is God, then serve Him. If Baal [a pagan deity of ANE culture] is God, then serve him." The Lord Jesus said: "No man can serve two masters", and "if you are not with Me, you are against Me". Of course we should not soon forget the words of the (honorary) prophet Bob Dylan:

You may be an ambassador to England or France,

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody,

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Furthermore, if the state truly was neutral, it would still be problematic for Christians, for the pursuit of neutrality communicates the notion that God and His Word are irrelevant to (supposedly) secular matters. However, the Bible does not teach the idea that we should compartmentalize segments of reality and knowledge to a neutral, god-irrelevant, zone, for their is no such place in all the world. God created the world, the world of mathematics, history, biology, astronomy, etc. Far from being irrelevant to these subjects, He is the very precondition for them. Further, it is the job of parents to see to it that God's word, which applies to all areas of life, is not only taught but is also reinforced. Attempting to be neural is not the same as reinforcement.

3. A third reason for choosing to homeschool is that public education is in shambles in America - just witness the many calls for reform and how poorly American education compares to other nations - and the average homeschooled child easily excels children educated by the state. The inescapable fact is that: the state is not called to educate (see point 1 above), and neither is it especially equipped to do so. Over against the State, Homeschooling does not require a huge, overgrown, bloated bureaucracy to implement desperately needed changes or make basic decisions, something that is often at the bottom of poor educational approaches, programs, and curriculum, all of which produce the many undesirable outcomes that we could easily list.

For those who do not think that we are personally equipped to teach our children better than the State, you might consider the fact that our children were born to us in the first place, not to the state (contra Plato). If the State was so naturally gifted or designed to do this, than why doesn't the State naturally produce children of its own so that it might educate them? In fact, the State is a poor parent, even when it artificially tries to assume such a role. The public records of State governed orphanages and adoption agencies are there for all to see, in all their ugliness. Just ask those who are on welfare how much they love the state. Even though the State continues to dole out money, it creates more resentment and more poverty among those it supports, all because it discourages hard work and productivity among its faithful "children".

In addition, as homeschoolers we have an abundance of resources available to help us with the subjects we teach. If the day comes that we do not perceive ourselves to be especially well informed in this or that area, there are still ways to competently deal with this, ways that do not flagrantly transgress our fundamental convictions or our parental responsibility to oversee all aspects of the education of our children. For example, many homeschooling families can and sometimes do get together with each other and trade off teaching certain subjects. Other measures are available.

4. A fourth reason for homeschooling is the concern we have to raise children of character, and to instill in our children such social taboos as virtue and a strong sense of morality. Contrary to what is taught and found in public schools, virtue is not vice and morality is not situational or relative. Even if the schools were not set for the dissemination of horrid notions of what ought to pass for good behavior, and they are, they don't have the foggiest notion why anyone ought to be moral in the first place. You simply cannot derive moral obligations from a naturalistic approach to life and the world, which is really what the aforementioned claim to neutrality is brought in to disguise.

In the absence of any foundation for morality, or any clear-minded idea of what is or is not moral, there is no discipline worth speaking of in public schools, and they become nothing more than breeding grounds for bad behavior. Children do not need any help learning bad behavior. Saying "mine", comes naturally; saying "thank you", does not. The former oozes out of them from day one. The latter has to be taught and taught and taught and still it often only comes out begrudgingly. Putting untrained children together to socialize each other only compounds this natural proclivity to sin. The apostle Paul said that bad company corrupts good behavior, something echoed by John Taylor Gatto, who said, "School is a twelve year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards for doing it. I should know."

5. A fifth and final reason for choosing to homeschool is that homeschoolers achieve what many state schools cannot - a safe learning environment, and that without any need for school police, metal detectors, psychologists, nurses, etc.

We recognize that some of you do not share all or any of the above commitments (esp. the first one), but since we are talking about our decision to homeschool, we think that you will agree that the above (esp. the first one) is more than sufficient to bear the weight of our choice.

Wash Before You Eat: Only Baptized Believers Should Be Admitted To And Can Worthily Receive the Lord's Supper

2008-08-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Introduction

In Mark 7:1ff it is written that the Pharisees had a tradition by which they invalidiated the word of God, a tradition that said it was requisite for people to religiously (not merely hygienically) wash their hands each time before sitting down to eat. The Pharisees said this practice was based on the oral teachings of Moses, but Jesus said it was vanity. Jesus cited the written words of Moses and Isaiah to show how fundamentally out of step the Pharisees were with the truth of God.

What the Pharisees did had a semblance of truth to it. The Mosaic law did prescribe certain cleansing rites as necessary to certain eating rites (e.g., Num. 18:8-20, and Lev. 21-22, both pertaining to priests; and Num. 9:1-14, and 19:11-22, pertaining to the people); this is one reason why their extra-Scriptural tradition was so easily pawned off on God's people as a pious activity. The problem is that the washings that were required by the Mosaic Law in order to participate in certain sacrificial or festal meals were washings and meals instituted by God for a religious purpose. The Pharisees had elevated their common meals to the level of those that were divinely instituted by God Himself; they were honoring God with their lips but themselves in their hearts and actions.

When it comes to Passover and the Lord's Supper, we have two eating ordinances, one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, both of which were instituted by God Himself, and both, as the following facts establish, are said to call for cleansing/washing. Such washing signifies the need for regeneration and the forgiveness of sin in order to approach the Lord for continual nourishment. The cleansing rite of all cleansing rites in the Old Testament was Circumcision; in the New Testament, all cleansing rites have been reduced to Christian Baptism.

Historical Considerations

1. All of the so-called branches of the Christian Church - Roman, Orthodox, and Protestant - hold baptism to be the sign of union with Christ, of cleansing by His blood and Spirit, and, hence, the sign of admission into the Church, the body of Christ. As such, baptism has historically been held to precede admission to the Lord's Table.

2. All Protestant denominations - whether Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc. - hold baptism to be prerequisite to a worthy reception of the Lord's Supper.

Biblical Considerations

1. Christ gave the great commission and included in it the command to baptize those who became His disciples through faith (Matt. 28:18-20; Mk. 16:16). This was to be followed by "teaching them to observe whatsoever things I have commanded you", and the Lord's Supper is surely to be included among the things He commanded ["Take, eat...Take, drink..." (Matt. 26:25-28); and "This do in remembrance of Me." (1 Cor. 11:24)].

2. The apostles baptized believers (and their households) immediately upon profession of faith (Acts 8:12-13, 35-38, 9:17-19, 10:44-48, 16:14-15, 22-34, 18:8, 19:1-7, 22:12-16). Only after this do we read of ongoing commitment to apostolic teaching, fellowship, participation in the Lord's Supper, etc. This was true from the first, for on the day of Pentecost we read:

"Peter said to them, 'Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,....so then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer....Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart (Acts 2:38-46).

Note the order: 1) Faith in the Gospel message; 2) Baptism into the body of Christ; and 3) Acceptance to the fellowship meal. This order is found repeatedly in conversion account after conversion account throughout the New Testament (faith --> baptism --> fellowship (inclusive of the fellowship meal)).

3. As a lead in to his discussion of how to properly administer and receive the Lord's Supper, which is found in 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul says: "I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ" (1. Cor. 10). Though Paul passes on to make applications of this that are relevant to the abuses prevalent in the Corinthian church, we should not miss the equally applicable observation as it applies to the question of the order in which baptism and the Lord's Supper are to take place: Baptism first (Red Sea crossing), Lord's Supper second (eating "spiritual food" and drinking "spiritual drink" in the desert).

4. The people Paul was speaking to in 1 Corinthians 11 regarding worthy reception of the elements were the same body of people spoken of in Acts 18:1-11, "...and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized" (vs. 8). It is to baptized believers that Paul is giving instruction on how to receive the body and blood of Christ in a worthy manner.

5. In order to partake of the Supper in a worthy manner, Paul calls on each individual to "examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup" (1 Cor. 11). In a later letter to the Corinthians the apostle Paul elaborates on such examination: "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves" (2 Cor. 13:5). If those who take the Supper must already be "in the faith", then they must also already be baptized, for baptism is to follow hard on the heels of faith (See point 2 above).

Theological Considerations

1. The following considerations presupposes that baptism is the New Covenant counterpart of circumcision,[1] and that what the Old Testament says applies to us, being just as "inspired of God and profitable, for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness,..." as it was on the day it proceeded from the mouth of God.

In light of this, it may be confidently inferred that baptism must precede admission to the Lord's Table, for it follows by a (theo-)logical necessity from Exodus 12.

"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'This is the ordinance of the Passover; no foreigner is to eat of it; but every man's slave purchased with money, after you have circumcised him, then he may eat of it. A sojourner or hired servant shall not eat of it. It is to be eaten in a single house, you are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. All the congregation of Israel are to celebrate this. But if a stranger sojourns with you and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native in the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it" (Ex. 12:43-48).

We see an illustration of this in the history of God's people under Joshua (Read: Josh. 5:1-15)

2. Baptism is a picture of newness of life; the Lord's Supper is a picture of feeding on Christ. Just as life must precede feeding, so by analogy new life must precede spiritual feeding on Christ.

3. Baptism is a sign of cleansing representing to us both the blood of Christ, by which our sins are washed away, and the Spirit of Christ, by which we are cleansed of our corruption (beginning with regeneration when the Spirit gives us a new heart). According to Scripture, no unclean person may eat the Lord's Supper. Since baptism signifies this requisite cleansing, it must precede approaching the table.

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[1] For a defense of this, see my: "Circumcision is Now Baptism".

The Sword Has Spoken, the Matter Is Settled

2008-07-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

In a new book[1] on an altogether different subject, David Berlinski makes an observation about Islam and in the process quotes the eighth century Arab poet Abu Tamman who reportedly said: "The sword is more telling than the book."

Assuming the accuracy of the quote, and without knowing the context of this remark from Abu, several things come to mind. Before listing them, I'm assuming that the prima facie meaning of "the book" as a reference to the Qur'an is correct, making "the sword" either that of Mohammed or of Muslims in general.

Given the above, several things follow (and whether Abu meant any one of the following, all of the following, or all of the following and more, the following are nonetheless true and the statement of Abu is thus apropos):

1) Muslims believe that the Qur'an is a miraculous work of Allah, the greatest proof of the truth of Islam, and, therefore, the greatest single factor or motive force in swaying people to become Muslims. However, the Qur'an has in fact never been an especially effective tool in seeing people, societies, and nations turn to Islam; the distinguished tool that gets this prize is the sword, first wielded by Mohammed (and his companions), and then later by his dutiful followers. It is an undeniable even if uncomfortable fact that the nations' people that converted to Islam did not do so through the means of peaceful Qur'anic suasion. Instead any and every nation, with few possible exceptions, that has ever embraced Islam, beginning with what was then (and still is) pagan Arabia (for it just swapped one form of paganism for a suped up Mohammedan version) down to the present day, has always and only converted by force and through much bloodshed and cruelty.

This is very different than Christianity where the Bible, which is not claimed to be a miracle in the same sense that Muslims hold the Qur'an to be (i.e., a miracle on the level of a literary production whose diction, rhetoric, style, etc. are held to be more poetic and beautiful than any other written work), and yet the Bible has been the effective tool in the reclamation of sinners that Muslim theory says should be true for the Qur'an. Once again, whereas Christians do not believe the Bible is necessarily, from a literary standpoint, on the level of something by a Dante or a Shakespeare, though it is quite moving in places even from a literary and poetic standpoint, nevertheless, they do hold that it was verbally inspired by God and is the very power of God unto salvation, the very seed that the Spirit uses to implant and create faith in the heart.

2) Since the Qur'anic text itself was determined by the sword under Uthman, the book only says what the sword of a certain faction determined for it to say.

3) If a Muslim wants to be sure of entrance into paradise, the only means this side of that great harem in the sky is through Jihad in the cause of Allah, i.e., through the act of fighting and spilling the blood of infidels rather than through faith or trust in the person and deeds of Allah or even by means of conformity to Allah's character and/or will as revealed in the Qur'an.

Hence, if you want to know about the veracity and real character of Mohammedanism, then you must ultimately look past all the idle remarks and spilled ink about mercy and compassion and look to all the spilled blood instead, especially when the ink is not without copious references to the sword anyway.

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[1] The Devil's Delusion: The Scientific Pretensions of Atheism

The Necessity of Deriving Our Apologetic Method From Scripture

2008-07-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Bible subjects the apologetic enterprise, as it does everything else, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ: "Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense..." (1 Pet. 3:15); and "...take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." (2 Cor. 10:5) Since the prerequisite to giving a reasoned defense is setting apart Christ as Lord, since we are called to make every thought obedient to Christ as Lord, and since the Bible is the source of our knowledge of Christ and of His will, then of necessity we must derive our apologetic methodology from Scripture.

When calling on and reasoning with men and women to submit to the authority of God, or for the truth of the Bible as the Word of God, it would be inconsistent to subject the truth of this conclusion to norms and standards or to a general method that is itself hostile to that authority from the outset. We would, in effect, be arguing for the authority of Christ or His Word on the basis of some other authority, which tacitly assumes that this other authority is more authoritative than the Lord or more trustworthy than His Word.

Human Dignity: The "Effluvium" of Christianity

2008-07-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Though atheists anxiously want to be thought of as the paramount defenders of rationality and science as well as of human dignity and freedom,[1] insofar as they advocate worldviews that are destructive of both meaning and morals, worldviews therefore that cannot possibly be true in any meaningful or obligatory sense, they make it exceedingly hard for others to share their overinflated self-assessment or the value of their proposed service to the world. As the history of philosophy has provided ample attestation, atheists have proven themselves incapable of constructing a justifiable and workable worldview on god-denying premises, and not for a want of trying. When left to their own sin-guided devices, to nothing but the internal inconsistencies of their own philosophical perspective(s), atheists end up intellectually warring with themselves and living conflicted lifestyles, lifestyles wherein they profess one thing but must live in terms of another, all the while routinely and ignobly putting the problem out of mind.

Atheism Undermines Human Dignity

One of the areas where this comes acutely to the fore is on the issue of human dignity. The religious and philosophical foundations for human dignity have historically been located in the Christian worldview, and for good reason: only in Christianity is man recognized for what he is – the image bearer of God. But in atheism, not to mention all lesser theisms where the gods (or god) in question are either finite or not exhaustively personal,[2] there is not only an absence of any comparable belief that could warrant this idea, instead there is a substitute account of man’s origin and constitutive nature that is altogether antithetical to the notion that man has any special value.

In one of those candid moments for which atheists usually kick themselves later, realizing that they’ve unwittingly given up the store and provided no end of trouble for the cause, James Rachels, professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama and ardent defender of atheism and its creation myth (evolution), at least until he was brought down by cancer in 2003, said:

"After Darwin, we can no longer think of ourselves as occupying a special place in creation – instead, we must realize that we are products of the same evolutionary forces, working blindly and without purpose, that shaped the rest of the animal kingdom. And this, it is commonly said, has deep philosophical significance….Darwinism undermines both the idea that man is made in the image of God and the idea that man is a uniquely rational being. Furthermore, if Darwinism is correct, it is unlikely that any other support for the idea of human dignity will be found. The idea of human dignity turns out, therefore, to be the moral effluvium of a discredited metaphysics." [3]

As can be seen here as well as other places in his writings, Rachels not only cedes the historical genesis of the belief in human dignity to Christianity but also sees it as philosophically dependent upon and inextricably bound up with Christianity. Simply put, according to Rachels: Christianity uniquely underwrites the notion of human dignity, while atheism does not.[4] It is little wonder, therefore, that Rachels was an advocate of a utilitarian approach to ethics that made no distinction between human and nonhuman life, as well as an animal rights activist, i.e., a proponent for the “equal treatment for other great apes”, and advocate of so-called moral vegetarianism (not to mention abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, et cetera).

In light of the above it may be asked, if there is no fundamental difference or qualitative distinction between animals and people, as an atheistic, evolutionary account of man implies, why should we choose to treat animals like we believe people ought to be treated instead of opting to treat people like animals are treated? If there is no significant rational and moral difference between man and animals (rooted in man’s creation after the divine likeness), why expect people to act and live as if animals were as important as humans are, rather than expect people to act and live as if they are no more important than animals or any other unintended product of “evolutionary forces working blindly and without purpose”? Why assume that animals have value like the people who supposedly evolved from them, when people have no special dignity being nothing more than evolved animals? As these questions expose, Rachels arbitrarily continues to operate on the assumption that people do have inherent value and thinks by leveling any distinction between humans and animals he can transfer the dignity of the former to the latter. But on Rachels’ atheistic presuppositions one may equally choose to say, since people have no special dignity, being nothing more than modified apes, then people should be treated like, well, modified apes. In other words, on an atheistic account of man, the statement that animals have equal value to humans should be seen as equivalent to saying that animals and man are equally worthless.

Vegetarianism or Cannibalism?

To bring the above problem out further, consider the example of Richard Rorty. Like Rachels, Rorty was an atheist and an evolutionist[5] and saw these “truths” as signposts, wobbly as they are, tipping in the same direction: a denial of human dignity and a consequent commitment to vegetarianism. Rorty himself provides a good thought-experiment for his view and in the process provides a more riveting example that a naturalistic and evolutionary outlook undermines human dignity and commits atheists to arbitrariness and inconsistent foolishness. With atheism unquestionably assumed, Rorty sets forth the following scenario, challenging all comers to give a satisfactory naturalistic answer that comports with eating meat:

"Aliens from another planet, with vastly superior intelligence to humans, land on earth in order to consume humans as food. What argument could you make to convince the aliens not to eat us that would not also apply to our consumption of beef?"

For the Christian, the answer to this question is as simple as pie: man was made in the image of God; therefore, thou shalt not murder. As the author of life and judge of all the earth, God alone has the right to kill and God alone has the authority to delegate those situations – like He has in the cases of self-defense, execution of criminals, and just wars – where the life of someone who bears His image can, if necessary, be taken. For someone to arrogate this right to himself without any divine warrant is murder, an assault on the image of God. [The Christian answer that man bears God’s image and is of special worth in the eyes of heaven is all the more strengthened by the doctrine of redemption, where God shows His great concern for humanity by taking on our nature. It is because of the fact that man was originally made in God’s image that the incarnation of the Son of God was even possible. In becoming a human being, Christ not only dignifies human nature, he provided the basis for its restoration from the devastating effects of human rebellion and sin. On this basis Christ sends His Spirit to dwell in His people and renew them after the image of God, in true knowledge, righteousness and holiness.]

What, by comparison, could an atheist say in response to Rorty’s question (or a secularist for that matter who insists on keeping God and interplanetary-politics separate)? Remove God from the picture and what reason could be given to Rorty’s fictitious fiends from outerspace for why it is wrong to take the life of a person and consume him or her for food that would not also apply to the consumption of other animals? Unless one commits oneself to cannibalism, saying, “If it is okay to eat one animal (say, a cow or a chicken) then it is okay to eat another animal (say, Bob and Jane next-door)”, then the only choice one has, given an anti-theistic and anti-Christian approach, is to become a vegetarian.

Commenting on this thought experiment, Greg Mankiw, a professor of Economics at Harvard University and a former student of Rorty’s who once had to tackle this very question as part of a class assignment, sums up the matter as well as can be expected:

"I can't remember what I said in the paper, but I remember becoming a vegetarian for several weeks thereafter. My carnivorous ways eventually resumed not because I figured out a good response, but because I ignobly put the question out of mind." [6]

An atheist who chooses to eat meat is just such a person, someone who has ignobly put the question out of mind. But even those who choose not to eat meat, trying harder than their fellows to be consistent with the dictates of atheism, have failed to see just how deeply the problem goes. For why can’t a person on atheistic principles freely choose the cannibalistic option? Why is the belief that man and animals are on a continuum an argument against eating meat rather than an argument for eating humans as well? That’s what animals do after all; they eat other animals. Indeed, it is just because man and animals are on such a continuum, biologically speaking at least – and what else is there to go on according to atheism? – that it is a digestively beneficial possibility for one animal to eat another animal. In other words, atheists can either be vegetarians or cannibals, with no non-arbitrary way of deciding between the two. Given atheism, it all comes down to a coin toss: heads you win (and live to tell the tale); and tails you lose (your head - literally). Fortunately this is an area where atheists rarely have the courage of their convictions. Atheists routinely substitute a coin that is rigged to come up heads every time, all the while hoping that no one will see what they are doing and bring the uncomfortable truth to light, a truth which they try to hide from themselves as much as from others.

One of the great ironies in all of this is that atheists argue that animals should be accorded a number of the same rights as man because of what they perceive to be a great similarity between the two, and yet rather than leave animals to argue their own cause they take charge of the matter themselves, acting as if they were stewards (in their own misguided way) over the animal kingdom.[7] Furthermore, atheists use their own markedly superior status and abilities to argue for things that animals themselves give no thought to. In all of this they prescind from the obvious: women, minorities, slaves, and other humans who have perceived themselves to be inequitably treated have often asserted the right to be respected and to have certain basic liberties in common with their fellows, due to their common nature, but no great ape has yet done so. Perhaps when a great ape walks out of the forest, marches on Washington, and says “I have a dream”, then we can all take note.

Conclusion

As has been seen, atheists say and do things which show that they cannot live consistently with their own approach to life inasmuch as it undermines the dignity of man. Whereas their own outlook commits them to say that men and women are no better than animals, which in turn are no better than evolved pond-scum, several generations removed of course, they continue to act and live as if human beings do have an inherent dignity about them, and that there is a profound difference between humans and animals. Indeed, in the very process of arguing for an atheistic view of man and beast, they show the great chasm that obtains between the two, for this the animals do not and cannot do. While their atheism dehumanizes man to the level of brutes, atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and secularists are never fully consistent with their espoused principles.

For all their failure philosophically and otherwise, dishonoring God and defacing in the process the image of God after which they were created, thereby showing their great need for the remission of their sins and for a spiritual renovation of their nature after the divine image, Christians still believe that atheists, as well as every other human being, have an inherent dignity, on the basis of which they are to be personally respected and accorded equal treatment before the law. In other words, although it is tempting, rather than treat atheists as their foolish philosophy would dictate, Christians believe in treating atheists as they would have others treat them, as men and women who bear God’s image. Above all, Christians believe in treating atheists as people who desperately need Christ, the image of the invisible God, the effulgence of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of His being, for only then will they be the champions of human dignity they allegedly want to be, for it was in Christ’s image that man was made and it is only in Him that individuals and societies can be remade and reconstructed.
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[1] This may be observed in many places, not the least of which is Humanist Manifesto I, II, and III, and the recent propaganda pieces of men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.

[2] Not even in Islam can we find a competitor for the Biblical faith for Allah is believed to be so separate and different from his creation that no creature could bear his likeness. This is why the Qu’ran and the Hadith never speak of man as “the image of God”. The very notion that man bears God’s image is blasphemous from a Muslim perspective.

[3] James Rachels, Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 1, 5

[4] In an essay by Rachels that appeared in The Great Ape Project (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, entitled “Why Darwinians Should Support Equal Treatment for Other Great Apes”, Rachels said: “It is this picture of humankind [i.e., that man bears the image of God] that Darwin destroyed”, p. 155.

[5] Back in June of 2007 Rorty also died of cancer like Rachels.

[6] This is found in a blog article on Mankiw’s site reflecting on the occasion of Rorty’s death, and can be accessed at the following website: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/06/richard-rorty.html. Emphasis mine.

[7] It should be mentioned that the high view of man held forth in the Bible does not entail that animals are worthless, as they would be on atheism along with everything else, and as Rachel’s and others suggest the Christian view implies. Rather, on the Christian approach to things, animals are neither sacred (as in paganism) nor worthless (as in consistent atheism), but creations of God over which man is to be a responsible steward (e.g., see Genesis 1:26-28). The details of what this entails are spelled out in the whole of Scripture.

Credo Quia Absurdum Est

2008-07-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Misquotation is no passing fad among atheists; indeed, they have been at it for a very long time, even if not for billions of years. One of their favorite people to misquote, at least when it comes to the Christian understanding of the relationship of faith and reason, is Tertullian, a second century church father and Presbyter in North Africa.

Once upon a time, Tertullian is supposed to have said "credo quia absurdum est", which is Latin for "I believe because it is absurd." But as intimated, this is an atheist fairy tale, for Tertullian never said it, at least not the Tertullian of history who is an altoghether different person from the Tertullian of atheist-faith.

Of course if it magically turned out that Tertullian did say such a thing, it would hardly be damaging to the cause of Christ since other views have been held among believers, and much more widely, such as the Thomistic view - intelligo ut creedam ("I understand in order to believe"), and also the Augustinian view - credo ut intelligam ("I believe in order to understand").

According to the Thomistic view, reason precedes understanding and is made the foundation for faith; and according to the Augustinian view, faith is seen as the precondition of reason, that without which there can be no true understanding (because reason would then have no pou sto or fixed reference point for predication).

It is quite apparent from the whole scope of his writings that Tertullian was more of a proto-Augustinian than anything else on this matter, and one of the better single examples of this from his writings is the following:

"For philosophy is the material of the world’s wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and dispensation of God. Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy… What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic Christianity! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after receiving the gospel! When we believe, we desire no further belief. For this is our first article of faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides." (The Prescription Against Heretics, VII.)

The above quote does reveal that Tertullian posited a stark antithesis between the world's wisdom, starting from its own autonomous speculations or reasoning about things (represented by Athens), and the wisdom that is from above (represented by Jerusalem), the reason that begins with God's revelation and, in simplicity of heart, goes on to produce an orthodoxy without any admixture of foreign elements. Nevertheless, it does not show a rejection of reason or advocate the notion that faith is antithetical to reason, unless that reason takes unbridled speculation, rather than God's revelation, as its starting point. Indeed, it was the same Tertullian who said the following about reason, rooting reason in God and seeing the world as open to rational investigation for this very reason:

"For reason is a property of God's, since there is nothing which God, the creator of all things, has not foreseen, arranged and determined by reason; moreover, there is nothing He does not wish to be investigated and understood by reason." (On Repentance, Ch. 1, vs. 2)

In any case, Tertullian never said that he was a Christian because Christianity is absurd. The closest one can get to a comment like this is the following from his De Carni Christi ("On the Flesh of Christ") written against the heretic Marcion:

"The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed--because it is shameful.

The Son of God died: it is immediately credible--because it is silly.

He was buried, and rose again: it is certain--because it is impossible." (Ch. 5, v. 4)

All sorts of considerations factor into a correct understanding of what is seen here, but the most relevant thing, beyond the fact that it isn't the same as what atheists and others have quoted Tertullian as saying, is the following: it is just because the central claims of the Christian Gospel are, from the perspective of the world's wisdom, shameful, silly, and impossible, that they are, from the perspective of that wisdom that is from above, altogether believable. In other words, unbelieving and believing wisdom have two different starting points and therefore end up evaluating the same thing very differently.

[As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, unbelieving wisdom, starting from a rejection of God, or at least, leaving God out of account, and reasoning according to its own crooked standards, will always deem God's revealed truth as weak and foolish, while believers will see it as the power of God and the wisdom of God. Given the antithesis between believers and unbelievers, given that unbelievers begin with themselves as autonomous, while believers begin with God as absolute, given that unbelieving wisdom proceeds according to its own darkened understanding and believing wisdom is lit up by the revelation of God, they will always have radically different evaluations of such things.]

This understanding is bolstered by the fact that the context of Tertullian's remarks are in fact in reference to 1 Corinthians, where it is written:

"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

A somewhat different interpretation of this passage in De Carni Christi, one that is not contrary but complimentary to the overarching (proto-)Augustinian approach of Tertullian that was briefly sketched above, has also been suggested and is a widely held interpretation. Lindberg and Numbers explain it this way:

"...Tertullian was simply making use of a standard Aristotelian argumentative form, maintaining that the more improbable an event, the less likely is anybody to believe, without compelling evidence, that it has occurred; therefore, the very improbability of an alleged event, such as Christ's resurrection, is evidence in its favor." (Lindberg and Numbers, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, p. 26)

In a footnote (#34) to this, the authors go on to explain:

"That is, resurrection of the dead is so improbable an event that the apostles would not have believed in the resurrection of Christ if they had not been faced with incontrovertible evidence that indeed, on this occasion, the improbable occurred. This fact makes the resurrection of Christ more probable than some other event; the occurrence of which might have been accepted merely on the basis of general plausibility".

No doubt the above accounting of things will be unsatisfactory to some atheists and other unbelievers who like to represent Christians as anti-intellectual and anti-rational, but it will remain a misquotation and a misinterpretation nonetheless. All that can be done with such as will not be confused with the facts (credo qui absurdum est), those who prefer the obscurantism of unbelief to the reason that is born of, rests upon, and thrives in the context of faith, those who refuse to humbly acknowledge their weakness and foolishness outside of Christ who is the wisdom of God and the power of God, is give them a little taste of their own medicine. Only a little taste, because the following from atheist Richard Lewontin is accurately quoted.

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." (Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997)

The larger context of these remarks does not, as some atheists have averred, help extricate them from the very ugly epistemological situation that would arise if Lewontin is correct.
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A Brief Observation On Acts 17

2008-07-11T18:59:00.001-07:00

Few would doubt that Paul took God's revelation as his starting point when witnessing to Jews, but many suggest he followed a different method when dealing with Gentiles or those who made no profession of faith in the Scriptures. However, it should be observed that no such distinction is made or intimated when it says, "he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the Godfearing Gentiles, and in the market place everyday with those who happened to be present." (vs. 17).

Although there certainly would be differences of a sort between the way Paul spoke to Jew and Greek, no indication exists that would suggest that these differences were of a methodological sort.

As an example of the sort of differences that did obtain, consider that the apostle named names when he spoke to a Jewish audience about Jewish figures and events, but refrained from doing so when speaking to a Greek audience about those same things (e.g., the apostle does not explicitly mention by name Adam or even Jesus in Acts 17 even though he does refer to them). The manner or form of speaking was different, but the matter or content was not.

Similarly, and to the point, Paul did not formally or directly quote the Scriptures or cite chapter and verse when speaking to a Gentile audience, but he nevertheless did reason with them from God's revealed truth, whether that which is found in the Old Testament, and there are many allusions to key O.T. passages in Acts 17, or the deposit of truth that belonged to him as an apostle of Christ: "That which you worship in ignorance, I proclaim to you."

Accordingly, the apostle's method as seen in Acts 17, is to boldly proclaim the truth of God, the fact that God is the self-existent creator of heaven and earth, and that God raised Jesus from the dead, proving thereby that the final judgment will come through a man, "the man of God's own choosing". Paul does this in such a way as to indicate that there is an antithesis between the truth that he is proclaiming and the view espoused by his hearers. Paul knows the truth but his hearers are culpably ignorant, groping after God even though He is near at hand, the very atmosphere of their lives. Though unbelievers vociferously deny that this is so, it is tacitly assumed in all that they do, from erecting an altar to an unknown God (thereby displaying their ignorance) to making certain unwitting remarks, as their own poets illustrate (thereby displaying that they know better and are without excuse).

Atheists Say the Silliest Things - Part II.

2008-07-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

"You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend." - Richard Jeni

Atheists like Stalin killed more people than anyone last century because they had no Friend.

"It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so." - Ernestine Rose

"It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are naturally prone to be selfish and ungrateful and need to be taught to share and say, "Thank you."

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. - Anonymous

The evolutionary mechanism of one age is the entertainment of the next. (q.v., Entelechy; natural selection; the hopeful monster theory; punctuated equilibrium; panspermia; etc.)

"One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist." - Francis Crick

And what shall we do with those, who, in the name of that same science, go on to assert that life on earth is the product of interplanetary sperm being sent to our planet by little green men? Sound familiar, Francis?

Apologetics and Aesthetics

2008-07-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

The wide-ranging, foundational perspective provided in God's word allows Christians to take anything as the proximate starting point for a discussion of the truth as it is in Jesus. With God as our ultimate starting point, we may take any fact in hand and show the necessity of relating it to Jesus Christ if it is to be intelligible and salvageable. As one writer observed:

"The Beauty of Van Til's philosophy is that, since God created everything and everything reveals God, one may begin with literally anything when speaking to an unbeliever. The only limitation is a believer's familiarity with the subject matter." (Joseph A. Fielding III, "The Brute Facts: An Introduction to the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til", The Christian Statesman, March-April, 2003)

With the above in mind, the more our knowledge is expanded to include the salient points of the various disciplines and activities that men and women are interested in, the better equipped we will be to present to them the intellectual challenge of the gospel and press the claims of Christ upon them.

(One of the practical ramifications of this is: for unbelievers who are otherwise apprehensive about a "religious" discussion, a topic that is presumed to be neutral or "unbeliever-friendly" can often rope them in. Furthermore, unbelievers are more apt to participate in a discussion over a topic they consider especially important, or a topic about which they consider themselves to be especially well informed.)

And so, for example, by enriching our understanding of something like aesthetics, if we run across an unbeliever who belies an interest in anything beautiful or artistic, the more ably we will be prepared to show them the One who makes sense out of it all - Jesus, who is altogether lovely, the fairest among ten thousand.

As a quick illustration, if a believer was to talk to an ancient adherent of Platonism in art, they might ask him or her how the Demiurge (Plato's finite creator) really provides a pou sto (or foundation) for the imitative aspect of art (i.e., mimesis). After all, the Demiurge is not ultimate, independent, self-explanatory, or self-contained; consequently, he/it cannot account for mimesis in the final analysis. To this, the die-hard Platonist may respond that the Demiurge rests on something further back, which itself rests on something further back, and so on until we get to "God" or the "Form of the Good." The problem with this, amongst many others of course, is that it is the Demiurge, not the "form of the Good", that sullies his hands with the chaotic and otherwise unformed matter of this world. In other words, what such an exercise will show is that Plato's ultimate, his postulated "form of the Good", is good for nothing as far as mimesis is concerned. Hence, the would-be Platonist is left without any ultimate foundation for making what he does intelligible.

The Christian solution is found in Colossians 2, for there we are told of the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness (Gr. Pleroma) of the Godhead in bodily form. In other words, Jesus is no Demiurge, no emanation, no lesser being that is strewn somewhere along a continuum of created or contingent things, but is the Pleroma of God, the radiance of the Father's glory and the exact representation of His being. By Him all things were made and in Him all things hold together. He upholds all things by the word of His power. His creative and ongoing providential activity accounts for mimesis in a way that Plato never dreamed of.

From an exercise like the above, we can then move on to proclaim that this same Jesus can save the one whose "good works", like Plato's forms, are good for nothing.

God's Revelation: The Foundation of Knowledge

2008-07-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

God's revelation is foundational to all knowledge because it provides the framework that is necessary to account for knowledge and the means that we ought to use to attain and extend it. In God's revelation, we learn of His existence, something about His character and attributes, and of His works of creation and providence. In terms of these truths, we are able to see reason for what it is, a tool to be used in faithful submission to God, and are able to evaluate the facts for what they are - things subject to the plan of God.

The idea presented above, i.e., that revelation is foundational to knowledge, is not to be confused with the idea that man only knows what he reads in the Bible. Though some have held this view, the truth is that God's revelation (In Scripture and nature) provides the context in which we can use our minds and senses to obtain knowledge of many other things about which the Bible does not speak directly. Indeed, God's revelation claims to provide the foundational-perspective that is necessary to obtain knowledge of anything, but it does not claim to tell us directly everything that we know.

Atheists say the silliest things

2008-07-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

[Atheist quips/quotes are in black; my replies are in blue]

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived" - Isaac Asimov

I think Asimov missed his calling. He should have joined Gideons International. (If any atheists have the courage of Asimov's convictions here, I'll supply the Bible's if you stock the hotel rooms.)

"Atheism is not disbelief in the existence of God (for who can prove a universal negative?); rather, atheism is the lack of belief in God." - common atheist saying

I think Atheist comedian Woody Allen said it better: "There's no way to prove there is no God. You just have to take it on faith."

"If God doesn't like the way I'm living, let him tell me, not you." - Anonymous, T-Shirt

If atheism is true, let Noone tell us so, not you.

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing, all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. - Gene Roddenberry

We must question the logic of those who grant the fault-ridden character of humans at one point, only to turn around and presume they are in a position to evaluate the actions of the Almighty at the next.

Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going? - Anonymous

When you get where you are obviously going, you will change your mind about where you came from.

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. - Richard Dawkins

Thankful to whom, exactly? (Rom 1:18ff)

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. - Christopher Hitchens

Okay, consider it done.

You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. - Richard A. Weatherwax

You don't need the Bible to justify hate, it is just part of the ordinary course of nature. So quit complaining as if there is something wrong with it.

To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask. - Geoff Mather

Since Einstein is dead, if he did give you proof that there was an elf on your shoulder, how would you prove that he did so? Would you say things like the following: "Who else could have come up with such a brilliant proof?" "But look at how it has all the earmarks of a proof designed by Einstein." "If Einstein didn't appear to me, would I risk being ostracized by the scientific community by claiming that he did?"

God should be executed for crimes against humanity. - Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez

Sounds great. First we should have some people predict it, then we should have people there to witness it, and after He rises from the dead...ooops.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. - Mark Twain

Death is a lot worse the second time around.

Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s? - Friedrich Nietzsche

That depends who you are asking:

Open Theist: Yes; Yes

Arminian: Yes; No

Calvinist: No; No

Atheism is a non-prophet organization. - George Carlin

Yeah, just look at George Carlin. He doesn't occupy a prophetic role to atheists or profit from his atheism, does he?

The Antithesis As It Relates to Apologetics

2008-06-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Believers and unbelievers operate according to fundamentally different, antagonistic, all-controlling principles, the one supernatural and the other natural (and there is no difference in this regard at the deepest level between advocates of non-Christian religions or so-called secular outlooks).

At base, this enmity is moral in character, resulting from the natural man's hostility to God and His Word and the believer's love for the same. This affects the outlook or worldview of the believer and the unbeliever, giving rise to two epistemologies, thereby obliterating any possibility that there should be any common notions between them.

Whatever common ground is to be found between believer and unbeliever, it is not in their professed systems of thought, but in what God speaking through Christ in Scripture says is actually true of men and things. Because the unbeliever is made in the image of God and is surrounded by God's handiwork, he knows that these things are so. Nevertheless, the unbeliever's principled opposition remains, causing him to suppress the truth that surrounds and hounds him, unless, of course, God sees fit to remove this enmity from him through regeneration of the Spirit, taking out his heart of stone and giving him a heart of flesh.

One Less God

2008-06-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

"We are all atheists when it comes to other people's god or gods. The only difference between atheists and Christians is that we believe in one less god than you do."

Since atheists so often parrot the above (almost as if it were an inspired part of their canon or rule of faith), I am inclined to think it is intended to be more than just a joke that atheists tell to edify each other, and that they actually think it is some kind of a nascent argument for atheism. Assuming that to be the case, I have two observations

First, atheists are playing fast and loose with their own definition of atheism here (something they like to get on others for). The fact is, and it doesn't look as glorious when it is stated accurately, atheists only lack faith in all these other gods, but Christians outright deny their existence.

Second, atheists are all Christians when it comes to rejecting 99% of the epistemologies that other infidels have set forth (rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism, mysticism, etc.); Christians just go one step further and say the remaining atheist epistemology is false as well (and the same goes for atheistic metaphysical theories, ethical theories, axiological theories, aesthetical theories, etc.)

The Place of Reason In Apologetics

2008-06-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

The explicit statements of Scripture, inferences from the truths of Scripture, and the approved examples of certain Biblical figures, all make it evident that reason has a place in apologetics, but its place varies according to the different senses of the word.

If by reason we mean the internal coherence of God's mind, which for us translates as the revelation of God found in the pages of Scripture, then reason is criteriological and thus occupies the highest place in apologetics. If, on the other hand, by reason we mean the use of our minds in the presentation of God's truth or in formulating arguments for God truth, then reason occupies a subordinate position. Such reasoning is to take as its starting point the truth of God's word, is to reason according to the method laid down in God's word, and is to conclude where God's word concludes. Reason in this sense is a tool to be used by the apologist in a way that is faithful to God.

Autonomous reasoning, that is, reasoning that does not take God's word but something else as normative - whether that laid down by a false god or some other creature - is anathematized in Scripture and philosophically collapses as arbitrary upon analysis.

God the Son Brought Down the Rain From God the Father

2008-06-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven." (Gen. 19:24; ASV, 1901)

Among the many passages of the Old Testament that provide support for the doctrine of the Trinity, passages that have been looked upon as significant in this regard from the earliest of times, are such as the one above that attributes the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah to the activities of more than one personal agent., each designated 'Jehovah' or 'God'. Just as surely as the church has found repose in verses such as this, so those outside of the church have (unsuccessfully) attempted to put them in a different - i.e., non-Trinitarian - light. As I have shown elsewhere, some modern Christians have capitulated on this as well, not by denying that the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the Bible but by denying that these passages in their Old Testament setting provide certain of the necessary indicia for Trinitarianism. Some go so far as to deny that these Old Testament texts speak to the issue at all, even when the full light of the doctrine as given in the New Testament is made to shine back upon them. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated, the Old Testament does speak to this issues with sufficient clarity, leaving those who deny the Trinity in material breach of both Testaments.

Against all of these notions the following provides a case for the historic Trinitarian understanding of Genesis 19:24, first from the Old Testament and then from the New Testament. The view of the present paper is the same as Leupold's who saw this downgrade trend over fifty years ago:

"We believe that the view the church held on this problem from days of old is still the simplest and the best: Pluit Deus filius a Deo patre ="God the Son brought down the rain from God the Father", as the council of Sirmium worded the statement. To devaluate the statement of the text to mean less necessitates a similar process of devaluation of a number of other texts like [Gen.] 1:26 and only by such a process can the claim be supported that there are no indications of the doctrine of the Trinity in Genesis. We believe the combined weight of these passages, including Gen 1:1,2, makes the conclusion inevitable that the doctrine of the Trinity is in a measure revealed in the Old Testament, and especially in Genesis. Why should not so fundamental a doctrine be made manifest from the beginning? We may see more of this truth than did the Old Testament saints, but the Church has through the ages always held one and the same truth." (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids,Michigan: Baker Book House, 1942)

Update: This article, in full, is now available on the Answering Islam website at the following link. Click here.

Let Us Make Man In Our Image

2008-06-29T13:57:00.001-07:00

[The following is the TOC and INTRO to one of two monographs (so far) on the Trinity. If you want a hardcopy of the entire document or both of them (shipping fee applies), then contact me through my e-mail: smprparatus@aol.com. If you want to download them for free, go to Answering-Islam.org]

By Anthony Rogers

Table of Contents

I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………3

II. The Prima Facie Case for a Trinitarian Interpretation…………………………..5

III. The Old Testament Case for a Trinitarian Interpretation……………………….8

IV. The New Testament Case for a Trinitarian Interpretation……………………..19

V. Answering Alternative Interpretations/Common Objections.....………………36

VI. Summary and Conclusion……………………………………………………..42

I. Introduction

Is it right to insist that the plural pronouns of Genesis 1:26 and similar passages (i.e., Gen. 3:22; 11:7; and Isaiah 6:8) demand a Trinitarian interpretation? That these passages do demand such an interpretation was the prevailing if not also the unanimous view of the church in the early, medieval, reformation, and post-reformation periods; it has been denied in the history of the Church only by heretics. The exception to the above seems limited to the modern period where it has become fashionable among many otherwise orthodox commentators and theologians to deny a Trinitarian interpretation or to offer alternative explanations of these texts as either possible or probable.

It will be my contention in this paper - over against modern detractors as well as heretics of all ages - that these passages in their immediate setting require recognition of personal plurality in the Godhead, and that they at least point in a trinal direction. Furthermore, when the whole of Old Testament revelation is taken into consideration, it is not only possible to construe that plurality in a trinal fashion but it is the only consistent way to interpret it.

After laboring to prove the above, this interpretation will be shown to be that of Christ and His apostles. The present writer knows of no higher authority and neither does anyone else, all denials notwithstanding. Christ’s interpretation ought to be received for what it really is: final. As Moses, the author of Genesis 1:26, said: “to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” (Gen. 49:10)

The Point of Contact

2008-06-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

Metaphysically believer and unbeliever share all things in common, for all reality was created by and is subject to the control of God. Psychologically the unbeliever knows this at some level, but epistemologically he deceives himself and says otherwise.

So in one sense believers and unbelievers share everything in common (i.e., metaphysically), but in another sense they share nothing in common (i.e., epistemologically). It is the schizophrenic behavior of the unbeliever - psychologically relying upon the knowledge of God that he has all the while professing an anti-theistic independence in the realm of knowledge - that provides the believer with a point of contact in the unbeliever.

Presupposition?

2008-06-26T16:07:00.001-07:00

A presupposition is an elementary assumption, a belief that we are more committed to than another belief, we would reject it only if it was found to be in conflict with another or other beliefs that are taken to be more elemntary or more basic than it. An ultimate presupposition is something that we are committed to "come what may". We grant to ultimate presuppositions the highest level of immunity; all other claims stand or fall before it, depending on whether they comport with it or not.

As with other terms, so with this one, the word presupposition has been used differently and is to be carefully distinguished from these other uses. An ultimate presupposition is not an axiom, if by axiom we mean an arbitrarily chosen and unprovable starting point; it is, rather, a belief that is transcendentally necessary. An ultimate presupposition is also not a hypothesis, something that is tentatively put on the table until all the results are in; it is held to be true from first to last. Finally, an ultimate presupposition is not a belief that is merely rational to hold, rather, and this is all-important, it is the very criterion of rationality, that in terms of which we evaluate everything else.

Neutral Reasoning: Impossible

2008-06-26T15:24:00.001-07:00

The notion of neutrality in reasoning is the idea that we can approach ultimate matters or matters of ultimate commitment (such as God's existence, the truth of the Scriptures as the Word of God, the Resurrection of Christ), in a presupposition-less, nobody-knows-as-yet attitude; however, this is impossible for several reasons:

1) The Bible says that all men positively know God and other things related thereto, all denials notwithstanding. This is not neutrality.

2) The Bible says that unbelievers have an axe to grind - i.e., they are committed in advance to misreading everything around them. It also says that believers are to favor a God-oriented view of all things. This is not neutrality.

3) All men, believers and unbelievers, are finite creatures, who, of necessity, must begin their reasoning somewhere. Men will begin either with God or with themselves as ultimate. This is not neutrality.

The True Shahadah

2008-06-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:3)

The words of Christ cited above are made up of several easily discernible notions, notions that are just as fundamental to everything Christian as they are contrary to all things Islamic. The disparity that exists here readily appears when a comparison is made between the foregoing statement of Christ and the fundamental confession of Islam, the so-called Shahada: "I witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."

This article has been moved to the Answering Islam website. To read the rest of it, go here.

Shiloh

2008-06-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

Some time ago my wife and I discussed the need for a good guard dog for the times when I am away and she and the kids are at home.

At first she wasn't big on the idea, but she eventually agreed. However, we had very different things in mind for the kind of dog we wanted. My main criteria was that it couldn't be a kick-me dog (and the bigger the better); my wife's concern was it had to be good with the kids. That means that I was thinking Mastiff and she was thinking Chihuahua.

After a lot of research we found a breed we agreed on and that met both of our wishes. We agreed to get a Bullmastiff, a really big dog that is known to be very good with kids.

After waiting for some time we finally found a breeder we liked and waited for the puppies to be born so we could choose the one we wanted. I originally wanted a fawn or red-fawn male but the litter only had two males and both were brindle. The rest were girls - there were three of them - but at least they were fawns. Since we didn't want to wait any longer, we chose a female from the three and had her flown from Arkansas to Nevada.

We named her Shiloh. So far she has proved herself to be everything we wanted. She is good with the kids and protective and is growing by leaps and bounds. Here are some pictures for those who are interested.

Here she is as a puppy at about two months old.

Here she is at 5 months

Here she is at 6 months

Canada, the gay, the beautiful

2008-06-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

In light of the Boisson affair/debacle, Canada should consider revamping its national anthem. My own proposal, though they may want to have it tidied up by someone with more lyrical ability than myself, is that it take something like the following form:

O Canada!Our home and native land! True patriot love in all thy sons command.

(O Canada! Our home and native land! True erotic love between thy sons command)

With glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free!

(With lusting hearts we see thee fall, the True North limp and bound!)

From far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

(From far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee)

God keep our land glorious and free!O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

(God vacate our land that it may be free! O Canada, free from religion and morality)

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

(O Canada, we stand on guard for thee)

Adumbrations of the Trinity in the Old Testament

2008-06-14T19:21:00.001-07:00

Scripture speaks of God in both the singular and the plural; singular when the being or essence of the Godhead (or one of the persons in particular) is in view, and plural when more than one or all three persons of the Godhead are in view.

The Unity of God

While the Bible clearly and consistently sets forth one God to the exclusion of all others, the word used for the oneness of God also allows for an understanding that in His innermost being God exists in a trinal fashion, i.e. as one God in three persons.

Accordingly, rather than use the Hebrew word ‘Yachid,’ the word for a single, indivisible unit, which is the word preferred by post-Christian Jews (q.v., Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith), the Bible uses the word ‘echad’ (e.g., Deut. 6:4), a word that is most often used in the Bible to indicate a plurality subsisting in unity (q.v. Gen. 2:4, etc).

Plural Nouns

Furthermore, although there are perfectly good words in Hebrew to use for "God" and "Lord" that are singular, and although Scripture does sometimes use such words, it also uses and even favors words that indicate that God is also more than one in some sense. This practice makes sense on Trinitarian assumptions and is not at all the way unitarians or polytheists would naturally express their understanding of God. For example,

1. God: The most common noun for “God” in the OT takes a plural form. It is usually modified by singular words. For example, the first verse of the Bible says: “In the beginning God (Heb. Pl. Elohim) created (Heb. Sg. Bara; Lit. = He created) the heavens and the earth.”

2. Lord: The most common noun for “Lord” (Heb. Plur. Adonai) in the OT also takes a plural form. As with the above it is usually modified by singular verbs, adjectives, etc.

3. Creators: Even as Scripture insists that God created all things by Himself (Isa. 44:24), it also speaks of Him as our “creators”: “Remember also your Creator (Heb. Plur.) in the days of your youth…” (Ecc. 12:1)

Plural Pronouns

Not only plural nouns but plural pronouns are also used for God. The most famous examples follow; these passages show a remarkable interplay or alternation between singular and plural words.

Gen. 1:26 “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…’”

Gen. 3:22 “Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us,…’”

Gen. 11:7 “’Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language,…’”

Isa. 6:8 “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’”

Nota Bene: 1) Certain translations, such as the NASB used above, capitalize words that refer to God. Us and Our are capitalized. 2) Only God can do what is spoken of in these verses (create, judge, and commission prophets), so God cannot be referring to any creatures here, whether angels or men. 3) Pre-Christian Jewish believers interpreted these verses along Trinitarian lines, as seen in the Aramaic Targums. 4) The New Testament provides its own inspired commentary of this Old Testament phenomenon of God speaking in the plural, as can be seen by a comparison of Isaiah 6:1-10 with John 12 (which speaks of the Son) and Acts 28 (which speaks of the Holy Spirit). 5) All extant post-apostolic sources see in these passages indications of the Trinity (e.g., Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.). 6) For a lot more on these passages, see here.

Plural Verbs

“And it came about, when God caused me to wander [Heb. Plur. Taw-law, “they caused me to wander”] from my father’s house…” (Gen. 20:13a)

“He built an altar there, and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed Himself [Heb. Plur. Gaw-law, “revealed themselves”] to him when he fled from his brother.” (Gen. 35:7)
“Surely there is a God who judges [Heb. Plur. ‘They judge’] on earth.” (Psalm 58:11)

Plural Adjectives

“…You will not be able to serve the LORD, for He is a holy God [Heb. Plur. Elohim Kedoshim, ‘They are a holy God’].” (Josh. 24:19)

Concluding Comment

Many more examples could be given for the phenomenon of God speaking of Himself and being spoken of by others in terms that bespeak both the essential unity of God as well as His personal diversity.

Say what they will, this is decidedly not the way a unitarian or a polytheist would write or speak of God. Trinitarians alone are comfortable with such language, for Trinitarians alone believe that God is both one and many.

2008-06-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

Heavenly Whatchamacallit:
A Plea for Contentment

---

Introduction

Many atheists feign a desire to merely argue against the general notion of a god, being unconcerned with and having no special antipathy for any god or gods in particular. Some Christians are also willing to make the case for a god of some sort or other.

In spite of how they would like it to appear, the reality is that all the wrangling over the existence or non-existence of a god is tentative or preliminary to the real aim of atheists and theists, for a nebulous being with no definite nature, attributes, and character and no concrete revelation as to what he/she/it expects or promises, is hardly offensive to the one or worth loving to the other. Furthermore, such a god is not and could not possibly be known, whereas the true God, the God of revelation, is inescapably known; indeed, He is inescapably loved or hated. The sooner all parties come to terms with this the better. Accordingly, as the following will labor to make plain, atheists are not content to attack, any more than Christians are content to affirm, a Heavenly Watchamacallit.

Atheistic Discontent

When it comes to atheists, an attack on “theism in general” should be seen for what it really is: a warm-up; their real interest is to get to the living God. Consider the following three examples.

First, there is the example of atheist B. C. Johnson. In his book The Atheist Debaters Handbook, Johnson, after an inordinate amount of calisthenics (often necessary to psych up the more timid) spent on attacking theism generally, finally writes:

"Having discussed theism in general, we may now turn our attention briefly to a prominent example of theism: Christianity. Here we will see theism in action and examine some of the moral absurdities it appears to encourage."[i]

Second, in Atheism: the Case Against God, well-known anti-theist philosopher George Smith in what is considered by many to be the Pilates of atheism (i.e., the most popular workout for atheists),[ii] had this to say about the aim of his book:

"This book is a presentation and defense of atheism. This is not a sympathetic examination or interpretation of religious doctrines; it is a straightforward critique, philosophically and psychologically, of the belief in a god, especially as manifested in Christianity."[iii]

Third, there is prominent atheist philosopher Michael Martin who wrote what appears to be an atheist’s guide to body building, i.e. a scholarly attempt to defend atheism. Noteworthy is the fact that Martin, unlike Johnson and Smith, seems to have little time for dumbbells and goes straight for the big iron. He said the following about the aim of his book, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification:

"My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. Atheism is defended and justified…My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not…I confine my efforts to showing the irrationality of belief in the existence of the Hebrew-Christian God, a personal being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and completely good and who created heave and earth."[iv]

So, from roundabout and run of the mill attempts like Johnson’s, through popular works like Smith’s, to more direct and scholarly efforts like Michael Martin’s, atheists belie their indifference to Yahweh, showing that they are not content until their ultimate hostility is directed at “Christianity”, “especially” at “the Hebrew-Christian God.” It may be the direct route of the few or the circuitous route of the many, but it is the specific God of Biblical revelation that all are aiming at in the end. The reason for this is simple: He is the only true God.[v]

Christian Discontent

As has been said, many theists are also willing to argue that “a god” exists, but even these are not content to leave it at that. After all, there is always the planned “second step” where it is hoped they can move from a bland god to a brand God. The examples could be multiplied many times over, but that of the otherwise venerable C. S. Lewis[vi] should be sufficient to make the point.

Good British gentleman that he was, Lewis would first try to gently nudge his audience in the direction of a god, rather than confronting them with the living God at the outset. He said,

“Do not think that I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.”[vii]

However, as a Christian Lewis was not content to end with “mere theism”, He wanted to conclude with “mere Christianity”. Consequently, he said a little later:

“When I chose to get to my real subject in this roundabout way, I was not trying to play any kind of trick on you. I had a different reason. My reason was that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing.”[vii]

The Excluded Middle

Since both atheists and theists ultimately set their sights on the living God, the question naturally arises: “Why bother with this ‘other god’ that no atheist is really content to argue against and no theist is content to argue for? Why doesn’t everyone just cut out the middle man and go straight for numero uno?”

Underlying all of this, or so the fear/hope seems to be, is the idea that if you allow an elephant to get his nose in the door it will not be content until it comes all the way in. The atheist appears to fear that by leaving the door open to the possibility that a god exists they are also leaving the door open to the God, and He, above all, is not welcome in their homes. The theist appears to share this fancy; consequently, he believes that he must keep the door open so that the living God may eventually be permitted or have an opportunity to enter in.

However, it is just because He is the only true God that general theism is a fallacy. The God of the Bible appears in any room He pleases, regardless of whether the door is opened with a welcome mat or locked with a “Do Not Disturb” sign; in fact, He doesn’t even care if there is no door at all (this only means that there is no exit for the unbeliever).

-------------------------------

[i] Johnson, P. 109
[ii] Pilates is the exercise fad that appears to have replaced, or at least surpassed, Tae-Bo in popularity. Before these there was Jabez and WWJD. Er, um, maybe I am getting my fads confused.
[iii] (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989), p. ix. Just a few pages later, Smith says, “Also, it is necessary to mention that I employ the term “god” in two ways. I use it with a lower case ‘g’ (god) to refer to the general idea of a god, i.e., the general notion of a supernatural being, apart from any specific characteristics. I use the term ‘God’ (with an upper case ‘G’) to refer specifically to the God of Christianity, along with its various attributes, such as omnipotence and so forth (p. xii).
[iv] Martin, p. 24.
[v] It would be a mistake to conclude from the limited focus of this article that only atheists belie the real object of their hate when they surreptitiously turn from a consideration of a vaguely defined deity to focus the brunt of their hostility on the full-orbed God of revelation; this is true of every ideologue and religionist on the planet. The natural man, acknowledged atheist or otherwise, hates God (Ex. 20:5; Deut. 5:9; Jn. 15:18-25; Rom. 3:9-19, 8:6-8, et. al.) In fact, as Christians have known for millennia, all men hate God so much that if they could get their hands on Him they would crucify Him.
[vi] Those things that contribute to Lewis’s “otherwise venerable” status do not include of course his low view of inspiration, his own contemptible view of the imprecatory Psalms, or his Arminianism. For trenchant insights and a response to such things as they relate to apologetics, see Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics (Philipsburgh, New Jersey: P&R, 1980), p. 84-88
[vii] Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 20. Later Lewis makes a similar comment: “We have not yet gotten as far as the God of any actual religion, still less the God of that particular religion called Christianity. We have only gotten as far as a Somebody or Something behind the moral law.” p. 23
[viii] Ibid, p. 24

Quotes On Defending Distinctively Christian Theism Over Against Some Kind of General Theism

2008-06-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

"But God also designates himself by another special mark to distinguish himself more precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God." (John Calvin, Institutes, 1.1.8.2)

"The apostle Paul lays great stress upon the fact that man is without excuse if he does not discover God in nature. Following Paul's example Calvin argues that men ought to see the true God, not a God, not some supernatural power, but the only God in nature. They have not done justice by the facts they see displayed before and within them if they say that a God exists or that God probably, exists." (Van Til, Apologetics)

"Christianity offers the triune God, the absolute personality containing all the attributes enumerated as the God in whom we believe. This conception of God is the foundation of everything else that we hold dear. Unless we can believe in this sort of God it does us no good to be told that we may believe in any other sort of God or in anything else. For us everything else depends for its meaning upon this sort of God. Acordingly we are not interested in having any one prove to us the existence of any other sort of God than this God. Any other sort of God is no God at all and to prove that some other sort of God exists is to prove that no God exists." (Van Til, Apologetics)

"They walk in the midst of this world which is an exhibition house of the glories and splendors of God, full as it is of the works of his hands, and they ask, mind you, whether God exists. They profess to be open minded on the question. They say that they will follow the facts wherever these may lead them. But invariably they refuse to follow these facts. They constantly conclude that God does not exist. Even when they conclude a god exists and that with great probability, they are virtually saying that God does not exist. For the true God is not surrounded by, but is the source of possibility. He could not possibly not exist. We cannot inteligently think away God's existence." (Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, ch. 5)

"We do not do justice to this passage [Rom. 1] by merely saying that all men or most men believe in a god or believe that God probably exists. Paul says that the revelation of the only existing God is so clearly imprinted upon man himself and upon his environment that no matter how hard he tries he cannot suppress this fact." (Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 93))

"This means that God, not some sort of God or some higher principle, but God, the true God, is displayed before men." (Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 100)

"...the Christian apologist does not argue for just any kind of abstract, general theism ("a god of some sort or other"), but rather for the specific conception of God revealed within the Christian Scriptures." (Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, p. 31)

Christianity, the Rise of Philosophy, and the Problem of 'the One and the Many'

2008-06-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

The worldview provided in God’s revelation is the conceptual framework in terms of which all things make sense and are accounted for. Convinced of this, many Christians have reveled in the observation that science was born in the context of Western Christendom and as a direct result of the efforts of individual Christians. Similar observations have been made about other grandeurs introduced into Western society by Christianity in the areas of civil government, jurisprudence, education and much else. Notwithstanding, some Christians have been pained by the fact that philosophy did not arise from Christian soil, a fact that has driven some to search out all manner of strained explanations.

While it can be disputed that philosophy arose in all respects first with the Greeks, there is really no need for Christians to be perplexed by what truth there is in saying it was bequeathed to us by them. It is after all an unwitting indication of the truth: God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. Because of rejecting the truth about and from God, the human race has been given over to an unending list of philosophical problems, and – short of exercising repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ – humanity is without any means of extirpating itself from these problems or of finding any solution to them.

An Old Problem

Greek philosophy was born from the recognition of a particular problem, a problem that, because of repeated failures to arrive at a solution, has, though much avoided in modern times because of its apparent insolubility,[i] remained very much with us to the present day. Speaking of this conundrum, William James said, “it is the most pregnant of all the dilemmas of philosophy,”[ii] and indeed it is. A careful study will reveal that this problem is at the bottom of many others. Accordingly, a failure to solve this problem is a failure to solve the others. The problem in view is that of “the one and the many.”

This problem asks, if reality is one and constant (i.e., if reality is characterized by unity and regularity), then how do we account for diversity and change? On the other hand, if the world is many and variant (i.e., if reality is characterized by diversity and change), then how do we account for oneness and constancy? And as the record shows us, “All attempts in philosophy to unify the diversity without diversifying the unity have ended in failure,”[iii] as have all attempts to diversify reality without also unifying the diversity.

An Older Solution

This problem is not one that would have naturally presented itself to a people who believed in and were in covenant relationship with the Triune God, a God who is both one and many. On the other hand, “The idea of one God in three Persons never crossed the pagan mind anymore than the idea that God could be both personal and infinite at the same time.”[iv] Whereas non-Christian conceptions of ultimate reality tended and still tend to conceive either of an ultimate unity that rules out genuine diversity or of an ultimate diversity that rules out true unity, Christians are in covenant with a God in whom unity is just as ultimate as diversity and diversity is just as ultimate as unity. This unity and diversity are reflected in the world that God made, and, to their frustration, the original philosophers sought to explain this world without reference to God and His Word.

“Because He created it [the world], its meaning is also created meaning, derived from Him who made it. This points us to the ontological trinity as the answer to the problem of the one and the many. Immediately we have a distinction which does not exist in non-Christian thought: we have a temporal one and many in the created universe, and we have an eternal One-and-Many in the ontological trinity, an absolute and self-complete unity… Since both the one and the many are equally ultimate in God, it immediately becomes apparent that these two seemingly contradictory aspects of being do not cancel one another but are equally basic to the ontological trinity, one God, three persons. Again, since temporal unity and plurality are the products and creation of this triune God, neither the unity nor the plurality can demand the sacrifice of the other to itself.”[v]

This is the most basic reason philosophy had its genesis elsewhere. With God’s self-revelation, as well as the implications of it for all aspects of created reality, God’s Old Covenant people could hardly have been expected to ask, “Given the ultimate unity of all things, how is diversity possible?” Conversely, it is hardly conceivable that they would have asked, “Given the ultimate diversity of all things, how is unity possible?”

Though God’s Old Covenant people would have been unlikely to conceive of the one and many problem, with the mass conversion of Gentiles to the Triune God in New Testament times the very opposite is to be expected. Indeed, it is to be expected that Gentile Christians would come to apply the fresh insights they had now graciously received, to this old conundrum under which they had previously labored and travailed all their lives. In this sense it might be said that the solution, to the extent that it was now recognized and applied as such, was a new, even a revolutionary, answer. It is precisely because the solution to this problem is to be found in God, and because a right answer to this question is the basis for all true knowledge and real progress in the world, that Western society has given birth to all the wonders that it has, inarguably outstripping every other culture on earth or in world history. Far from being a source of humiliation for the Church, the genesis of philosophy outside her fold really should be looked upon as further insight into the truth that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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[i] As one example, see the entry on “Metaphysics” in A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), edited by Anthony Flew: “...since no conceivable experience could enable us to decide between, for example, the statements that reality consists of only one substance (monism) or of infinitely many (monadology), neither serves any purpose in the economy of our thought about the world, and they are alike neither true nor false but meaningless.”
[ii] The Writings of William James, ed. by John McDermott (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 258
[iii] Scott Oliphint, source no longer remembered.
[iv] Robert Morey, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues

[v] Van Til, The Defense of the Faith